


I want this to be true

by yellowhalcyon



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Art, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Blow Jobs, Consent Issues, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff and Angst, Gay Bucky Barnes, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Modern Bucky Barnes, Multiple Orgasms, Not in the first chapter tho, Sex Worker Bucky Barnes, Shrunkyclunks, Smut, Suicidal Thoughts, Vague Narrator, Wall Sex, i'm ace & writing about a sex worker so it's probably not gonna be that sexy all the time, if you hadn’t guessed it I don’t like Tony stark, in the sense that i'm gonna reveal stuff often after they've occurred, there's probably not gonna be smut in every chapter.... especially since i'm not good at it, very mild tho
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:06:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 52,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24784330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellowhalcyon/pseuds/yellowhalcyon
Summary: Steve pays a lot of money to spend the night having sex with a guy he’s never met before. When it all comes to an end with the guy handing over his number to Steve, that’s how he meets Bucky Barnes and it’s really the start of everything.Bucky is a sex worker who now happens to be dating the one & only Captain America. But a lot of people plant themselves in the way of that. While they try to make things work, Bucky realises that things are different with Steve in a way he only becomes aware of once he has it.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 20
Kudos: 73





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I've just been thinking about for a while but not really had the guts to write it... here we go, I guess :) 
> 
> Feel free to let me know what you think of my fic, if that's something you do  
> If not, I'm still hoping you enjoy it anyways :D

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What year is it, 2015? No, it’s 2020 and I orphaned all my stucky fics probably like 2 years ago (although it feels longer) and yet I am back at it again.
> 
> Maybe I’m homesick or something, who knows?

Bucky watched the dial of the Avengers Tower elevator climb higher and higher. Fidgeting his fingers on his thigh, he shifted to his gaze over towards Steve. He scanned his features to get a gage on how he was feeling. Nothing negative came up so far. Steve had his brow pinched together slightly in that way Bucky couldn’t help find endearing. This would be Bucky’s first time meeting Steve’s friends, so it was easy to imagine they would both be equally run a hill with different emotions at that moment.

“Can I be honest?” Bucky said.

Blinking, Steve returned from whatever chain of thought he’d disappearing down and turned his head. “Always.”

“I’m a bit nervous,” Bucky said, “not that I don’t think your friends won’t be nice, they’re your friends. But that’s exactly it, I want to make a good impression and so I’m just…”

“Cautious, anyway?”

Bucky nodded. He bit his bottom lip and tapped his fingers with more force. They hadn’t spoken about it all evening. And he knew he needed to get this conversation out of the way now, before it came up later when in company. Nothing Steve had done so far warranted any nerves; it had just become almost natural by now to feel like this whenever he brought up his job with boyfriends.

“I know I said I don’t want to make everything about this,” Bucky said. He rubbed at his bare forearm, “but… what’s the situation with saying who I am? Have you told your friends yet that I sleep with strangers for a living?”

“Uh, no, I haven’t.” Eyes wide, Steve shifted on his heels and glanced down. He took a second to collect his words. “I thought I’d leave that to you. So if they ask, then it’s up to you to tell. And if they don’t, then you get to choose to tell them whenever you want.”

Bucky swore he could feel his heart physically swell. He could count on one hand how many other boyfriends had let him take this much control of the situation. The numerous times – a generous amount, even – he would start a conversation with a friend of, or a family member, and they would ask about a job he didn’t know he was supposed to be working. The choice to reveal himself on his own terms already taken away.

And sure, Bucky never felt bad in any of those relationships. They had their general ups and downs, never hurt him in ways that he would label as abusive. But after being with Steve for a few months, he became acutely aware of just how big a problem his job must have been to previous boyfriends. How they all treated him in specific situations, and only did so because of what he did for a living. Having a light shone on it all, it was genuinely starting to bug him.

Back in the present, Bucky let his silence go on too long apparently.

Steve started to look worried, eyebrows pinching together again. “What? You didn’t want me to have told them beforehand, did you?”

“No, no. I prefer this,” Bucky said, insistent. He touched a hand to Steve’s arm, the skin unusually warm as always. “You’re good, Steve. Thank you.”

Growing a smile, Steve used the point of contact to draw Bucky in. He tugged Bucky to his chest, lifting him clean off the ground, and twirled him around. After a sharp yelp, Bucky quickly braced himself on Steve’s arms and giggled at the rush.

He didn’t know if he would ever get used to being so easily manhandled. He’d been with fair share of big boyfriends, and even big clients, before. They had barely managed to lift him for more than a few seconds and never higher than a few inches off his feet. Certainly not as fluidly and out of the blue as Steve could. They stood at basically the same height, so it always surprised him.

“You should know,” Steve said. His arms still locked under Bucky’s arm, he carefully put him down and held him close. “Nat and Sam… they’ve both been through a lot – which, um, isn’t me calling what you do a lot, of course. But, to some people, you’ve said they tend to see it that way. Sounded like you get that a lot of the time, actually. So to set it straight now, I don’t want you to worry about Sam and Nat judging your job. They should understand and be cool with it. If you decide to tell them that is.”

Like a candle just under his heart, warmth glowed inside Bucky as he smiled. “Thanks, Steve.”

“And if they’re not then,” Steve said, intentionally squaring his jaw, “I’ll make them cool.”

Bucky had to laugh. “Please don’t do anything to your friends for me.”

“Oh nah, nothing like that. I’ll just beat Sam at a few rounds of pool and he’ll call it even.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works.”

Steve shrugged. “We did it once when he said Star Trek was better than Star Wars and it seemed to work then.”

“Star Trek _is_ better than Star Wars.”

This close a distance, Bucky could see the little twitch under Steve’s eye. Now literally faced with the concept, he’d never really thought about it. That within the wide variety of superheroes in this world, the Avengers included, they could have strong opinions on pieces of media, like public citizens did. Up until this point, they’d shared pretty much the same opinions on everything and Bucky hadn’t yet noticed it.

Thinking about it now, as far as he was aware, none of them ever expressed anything opinionated or political via interviews and social media on the things that the public people watched or enjoyed. Presumably to feign a sense of neutrality and avoid upsetting their adoring fans who disagreed. Instead of pleasing some, they pleased none.

Although, sometimes Bucky believed they ned speak up on certain matters, if only to shut up the trolls and shit, and stop them from hurting even more people.

Stood in front of Steve with a chance to have that sort of conversation, and see how far he could push it, Bucky found himself grinning.

“You’re entitled to that wrong opinion, Buck,” Steve said, voice strained somewhat.

Tilting his head, Bucky’s grin grew a little bigger. He could feel the grip around his middle tense up in anticipation. “What, you saw The Last Jedi and thought yes this is better than a found-family that actually gets along with each other?” To his surprise, Steve let go and for a split-second Bucky worried he’d genuinely upset him.

Steve propped his now-free hands on his hips. “Okay,” he started, “it’s not perfect in… _some_ ways, I’ll admit, but you can’t deny that the aesthetic of Star Wars is far more interesting.”

Bucky recovered quickly. “Never said it couldn’t be, but aesthetic can’t make up for the tremendous amount of plot holes the ninth film had.”

“Oh-ho, I will most certainly fight you on this, Buck,” Steve said and took a step closer.

Bucky figured it wasn’t really meant to intimidate him, especially from the smile tugging at Steve’s lips. One that he fought so desperately to keep down. So, Bucky rose up the few inches Steve had on him to do this eye level. “I’m in no doubt,” he said.

Both too caught up, neither of them noticed the lift ding, arriving at its destination, and slide its doors open.

“Who’s fighting who, already?” a voice said from behind them, having caught only the very tail end of their conversation.

Bucky turned to see a man around his height, with dark brown skin, short black hair and a well-trimmed beard, dressed in sweater shirt and loose pants. Bucky certainly had gotten the dress code right.

Next to him stood a woman with equally laidback attire of yoga pants and an oversized jumper covered in cat hair. Make up still blemished her pink cheeks, though, and she had the nicest dark red hair Bucky had ever seen.

These were Steve’s friends. In a way, Bucky felt he already knew them, from the interviews and news reports of the disaster in Sokovia and then the recent bombing in Nigeria, alongside everything Steve told him about how they really were. It felt weird to see them in person, outside of the costumes. Like bumping into a teacher unexpectedly at the supermarket and being reminded that they too needed to eat, shop, and clean same as everyone else. He hoped this feeling would fade as the night went on.

Both stepped back, while he and Steve walked out of the lift before it closed on them.

Bucky took advantage of this situation, and because he knew he could call someone to his side, “Steve thinks Star Wars is the better of the two,” he said directly to the man, presumably Sam.

As expected, Sam’s face lit up and he looked to Steve.

“It’s not that bad!” Steve interjected, instantly. He threw his arms out, his voice reaching a rather high octave.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, continuing, “but the problem lies in you thinking it’s _better_ than Star Trek. At least the hero doesn’t kiss her abuser in any of those ones.”

“Wow,” Sam regarded them both. “You’re really throwing in that argument this early on. At least introduce us first before you break up.”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Steve said, recovering, “Sam, Nat,” he gestured to Bucky, “this is Bucky Barnes. Bucky, this is Sam Wilson,” he gestured to the man – Bucky had been correct – and then to the woman, “and Natasha Romanova.”

Natasha held out her hand to shake, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “Pleasure to meet you,” she said.

Taking her hand, Bucky supressed a whimper at the hidden strength within her grip. Very thankful when Sam came forward and patted his shoulder, instead.

“Same here,” Sam said. Tilting his head, his smile abruptly fell away. “Shame to hear you’ll be breaking up soon, though.”

“Hilarious,” Steve said and Bucky glanced over just into time to watch him roll his eyes.

Together, they made their way down to a walled off corridor that opened up into a lounge area, glass walls showing the many other rooms surrounding them. The corridor carried on and led onto those other areas. Glass made up a majority of the walls, it would appear. In the corner, under an overhang balcony and down a small section of stairs, sat a large TV setup with sofas. In between them, a coffee table covered in take out and beers.

The smell of take out drifted up Bucky’s nostrils and his stomach gurgled. He spotted the array of take out and pizza boxes on the coffee table.

As they approached, Natasha turned to Bucky, “Steve didn’t inform me of any allergies or eating preferences, so I ordered a variety of take out,” she said. “Hope that’s okay.”

“I can eat whatever, so it should be fine,” Bucky replied and she smiled with no teeth.

“The more important question is,” Sam overtook them and nabbed something off the TV stand. He held up a colourful disc case, “which first?” he said. “I got _Just Dance_ or we could go really old school and bust out those ancient-looking dance matts I found in the attic.”

“What, as in those ones from the early 2000s?” Bucky asked.

Sam nodded, giddy.

“And they still work?”

They would have to be over 10 years old. It would be a miracle, if they did work, that they kept working throughout the night. Bucky glanced over to the TV stand for a console to plug them into and found every console ever produced in the last century. He recognised all, bar one, a tall vertical cuboid. It stuck out like a sore thumb in the centre and it took him a moment to realise it was a new console, meant to be released later this year. He guessed the perks of being a superhero was that you got things before the public did.

Steve touched Bucky’s hips as he passed behind him and Bucky turned to smile his way.

“That’s what we’ll find out tonight,” Sam said.

Steve plonked himself down on the edge of a sofa and tilted his own smile up at Bucky, when he came to sit down beside him, looping a relaxed arm around Bucky’s shoulders.

“I’ve seen the new song selection on _Just Dance_ , though,” Natasha said from the adjacent sofa, where she sat with an open beer in hand. “Steve, you and Sam need to do _Rasputin_.”

Sam sagged. “Ah, but the guest is meant to choose.” He looked to Bucky.

Bucky’s stomach spoke for him and gave out a grumble from below. “I can eat for a bit,” he said, offering a compromise. “You guys are fine to do what you want.”

Sam flipped his gaze over to Steve, next to him, “up to you?”

Reluctantly Steve pulled his arm away from Bucky and got up. “I’m ready to whoop your ass,” he said.

A space had been made out in front of the TV. Sam and Steve both stood in it, whilst setting up the games console and loading it up with _Just Dance_. The TV flicked on and immediately flashed with the familiar colours of blue and silver as the console powered on.

Bucky busied himself with identify exactly what had been ordered for take out. A pile of paper plates had been left to the side. He peeled one away and followed his nose for what from the feast he fancied the most.

Spread out across the table were wet noodles in one bowl, some rice in another, and a selection of different meats in dark sauces, surrounded by spring vegetables and mushrooms. Three pizzas boxes lined the table edge behind them.

Bucky had pizza the other night at a work friend’s party, so he started on the noodles first.

Natasha shuffled up to join him. “We accumulated a variety of sauces but let me know if you prefer something else and I can go retrieve it from the cupboard over there,” she said.

Bucky went to insist once more that that would be fine. But going off the look on Natasha’s face, they didn’t want him to be fine, they wanted him to be happy. “I could go for sriracha mayo,” he said and began piling up food on his plate.

“I’ll have a look.” Natasha got up and headed off to the cupboards on the far-left side.

Bucky settled on the barbeque sauce for now, but when he went to squirt it on his plate, nothing came out. Sauce bottles tended to be stubborn like that. Not wishing to spill sauce all over himself in the attempt, he quickly put it back down on the table.

Sam and Steve stepped apart, having finished setting up the game. They aired out their space as the menu loaded up their profiles, testing manoeuvrability. Lost in the rhythm it would be very easy to slap or knock something. Or someone.

Bucky finished his food pile and curled noodles around a plastic fork.

Sam glanced over Steve’s shoulder towards him. “Make sure you don’t whack Bucky from there,” he said, nudging his head. “Just straight up knock your boyfriend out in front of us.”

Steve snorted. “I’ll be sure to keep my distance,” he said.

“Not too far, though,” Bucky said, mouth full of noodles, “you’ll spoil the view.”

Steve looked fully over his shoulder with a devilish smile and Bucky responded with an innocent one of his own, staring up at him through his eyelashes. He thought to reach out and slap Steve’s ass to enhance his point.

Natasha returned with an orange bottle and halted that thought. “Sriracha mayo for the guy,” she announced, plopping it down on the table in front of him.

Bucky threw her a smile, alongside his “thank you.”

Natasha accepted it gladly and returned to filling up her own plate.

Bucky realised, picking up the bottle, the sriracha mayo still had the plastic around its lid. It hit him for a moment that maybe that was why the other one hadn’t worked. He nabbed the barbeque sauce again and subtly attempted to check if it still had the plastic on. Indeed, it did.

There were two conclusions to be made from this. One, they rarely hung out and bought the sauces solely for today. It would explain the take out at least.

But what Natasha had said already disproved that theory, since they had definitely played the game before. Also, it wasn’t uncommon to order take for a group events.

So did that mean they had bought bottles just for Bucky. A quick check of the sell by dates disproved that. This bottle was almost out and sauces tended to last a while.

Bucky exhaled sharply through his nose. He tried not to think about this too much. Steve’s friends wanted to make a good impression, surely his own nerves were merely getting mixed up with that.

Bucky ripped open the bottle and shook the contents over his plate.

Seconds later, the song started up. Immediately Bucky understood Sam’s concerns over him being whacked in the face. The first few sets of dance moves involved broad extensions of both the arms and the legs.

Steve surprised him by being genuinely quite good. His body moved fluidly to the music and he never tired, no matter how demanding the next set became.

The news and other media outlets never showed any athletics superhero feats on general TV, because usually they were too close to the violence and explosions, and therefore unfit for family viewing. But everyone with a phone and access to YouTube had seen the video of Captain America, right in the middle of the Chitauri invasion, performing a gracefully leap and flip between two floors on the outside of the building. Bucky really shouldn’t have been so surprised he could dance so good to some game.

Sam kept up for the most part. Towards the end, he started to get a little breathless, but finished the same time as Steve and never faulted greatly on any of the moves.

Steve still won the match.

Panting and exhausted, Sam flopped over on the arm of the other sofa.

Steve, to his credit, tried not to appear too smug as he sashayed back over to Bucky and planted himself down next to him.

Bucky leant into Steve’s open arm and found his chest didn’t even feel that warmed up, than the usual high temperature Steve possessed in his super soldier body. He held up his loaded fork and Steve leaned forward to snatch it up in one bite.

He then continued further forward to start making up his own plate.

Sam raised an arm to the ceiling. “I’m gonna,” _inhale_ , “need a minute if anyone else,” _inhale_ , “wants a dance,” he said.

“You didn’t have to go that hard,” Natasha said, pointed out as she leaned back with her food, tucking her legs under herself.

Sam shot her over a look. “When it’s Captain America, you always go _that_ hard,” he said. A laugh tickled at his throat, “I’m sure Bucky can testify to that, hey, hey.”

Bucky looked up and around abruptly at the sound of his name. “Uh, sure,” he said without thinking. Then it hit him what Sam had been implying and he snapped his head straight over to Steve to ask silently, that he was sure he hadn’t told them anything yet. It felt a bit early for sex jokes.

But it made sense when he took in the sudden state of Steve, who offered back only an amused smile from his newly flushing cheeks. Steve then smoothed his fingers and thumb down the sides of his mouth, an action he clearly did unconsciously, to hide his forming blush.

Bucky never got flustered on jokes about sex, their appeal wore off pretty quickly in his line of work. But that didn’t stop him from making them. Although he’d never gained a reaction such as this from Steve. Steve’s friends knew him well, if they could so easily and quickly put a red flush on his face.

Bucky chomped down on another small chunk of his meal and added nothing else, unable to fight the smile from his lips.

It had little effect on Natasha, as well, who barely cracked a smile. “Where do you get your nails done, by the way?” she asked from across the way, after Bucky caught her eye.

“Nowhere,” Bucky said, shrugging along to the change of subject. “I, uh, just did them myself.”

“Really, you’re good,” Natasha said in surprise, “how’d you get them to stay so filled out, yet while still neat?” She processed to guide his fork-holding hand – empty of food – towards her, turning it over to observe and admire the thumb nail.

Bucky had simply painted on a black colour at the beginning of the week, when his days off started, as a treat. He didn’t expect Natasha enquiring about them to give him a strong flurry of pride. But when he thought about it, the infamous Black Widow was known for her accuracy.

“I imagine he doesn’t have deal with the same kinds of people you do, Tash,” Sam said, coming to a stable breath now on the sofa next to them, “and in quite the same way.”

Natasha jerked his arm gently, before letting go, and it drew his attention back. “Steve has been purposefully indeterminate about you,” she said.

“Yeah,” Sam finally sat up. “Start with, how did you two even meet? Can’t have been from any of the things we were thinking of, cause Stevie-boy here, well, he never goes out.”

“Wanda and I–” Bucky didn’t recognise the name but, going from the remaining Avengers, Wanda must have been the Scarlet Witch. Either that or she wasn’t an Avenger “–were surprised you’d even managed to make a friend,” Natasha leaned past Bucky to talk to Steve directly, “let alone someone who’d agreed to date you.”

Steve rolled his eye to the ceiling, still smiled though.

Sam caught Bucky’s gaze suddenly, his own eyes exaggeratedly wide. “Blink twice if you’re being held here against your will.”

Steve let out a long winded groan, beside him. “Please, stop. Both of you,” his voice came from behind his hands.

Bucky turned fully to smile his way and waited until he glanced up. “You gotta admit their jokes are hitting the mark somewhat,” he said. They shared a knowing look.

“Hmm, yeah,” Steve hummed. Offering with his hand, he stated once more, “it’s up to you to tell them. Whatever you share, I’ll follow your lead.”

Bucky could picture the curious looks on Sam and Natasha’s faces. Every time, it warmed his heart to see that Steve genuinely planned to leave this completely up to Bucky. No predetermined story and no vow of silence. He could say how little or much he wanted.

Only once he had this, did he realise it was something he’d really been missing in past relationships.

“Steve _hired_ me, actually,” Bucky said, turning his head back to face the others. “For the services I provide. That’s how we met.”

Natasha’s eyebrow rose arched ever so slightly, the corner of her lip turned upwards just so. “I knew it. It was only a matter of time, Rogers, before you bought yourself a boyfriend.”

Laughter erupted between all of them as Steve groaned into his hands again, with a new wave of gusto. His own grin still peeking out from the sides, however.

Bucky waited for the laughter to die down somewhat, before continuing. “No, no. But you’re a lot closer to the truth than you think—”

_Ding_!

From across the room, the elevator dinged joyfully.

Bucky let his mouth shut slowly and settled for the fact that if people needed to pass by or join them, he would have to wait another time to finish answering about how he and Steve met.

Already thinking up excuses to change the subject, Bucky didn’t really want to lower his voice, or blurt the words out like a dirty secret, and get the wrong impression. This was going to be a normal, mature conversation about his place of work because they were Steve’s friends and he’d said they would be fine. And Bucky believed him. He couldn’t deny that it did annoy him, though. He’d been so close and with the perfect lead up.

But nothing could have prepared Bucky for what happened to arrive from the lift and walk around that corner.

This had always remained a possibility. They were the Avengers, after all. They sat right now inside Avengers Tower, formerly named _Stark_ Tower. But Bucky had believed if he were to meet _the_ Tony Stark tonight, it would have already happened.

It didn’t matter, on the grander scheme of things. It did not matter. Steve had been accepting of everything about Bucky’s life so far, more accepting than even his own parents who’d still discouraged him greatly in the beginning. But he couldn’t deny that this one thing still stood a chance to make matters between him and Steve become complicated.

Bucky hadn’t brought up his past experience with Mr. Stark yet for a reason. It made matters personal. And so Steve had no idea this wasn’t Bucky’s first time in Avengers Tower. Bucky came here before, back when the building went by its former name.

Tony Stark had hired him, not less than 5 years ago now, along with a few others from the same company, for a night entertaining Mr. Stark and his guests. Nothing new Bucky hadn’t done with a few celebrities and big names throughout his career. When his company did everything by the book and paid their taxes, it attracted the attention of those who didn’t want the general public knowing about their evening activities.

And, like with almost all of them as well, at Stark’s party he’d needed to sign a wavery of anonymity. By law, he was never to give away any information about that night and the use of his services to the press or any other professional individual, or even his own friends and family. Otherwise, Tony Stark would be able to personally sue him for all he was worth. Not that it was a secret worth giving or else that would make him a hypocrite.

But, Bucky realised now as his eyes settled on a man he hadn’t seen in person for over half a decade, nothing in the small print prevented Tony from doing the opposite to him and revealing what Bucky had done that night.

His stomach dropped. He didn’t want Steve’s friends to find out who he was this way.

“Hello, people!” Tony Stark said before even coming into view.

A bald, black man in a military-looking uniform followed close behind. Bucky didn’t recognise him as someone from the night he was hired, thankfully.

“I’m sure you made your best efforts to inform me of your little gathering,” Tony said, “so much so, that Friday had to let me know why the lights were on this late.”

“Sorry,” Natasha leaned her head over the back of the sofa to address the approaching men. “I sent you a formal invitation in the mail but it must have gotten lost,” she said, tone neutral despite her words, “you know how the postal service can be sometimes.”

“We knew you’d show up eventually, man,” Sam said. Getting up, he stepped forward to give Tony’s companion a hug and pat on the back. “At least you bought your better half,” he said.

Tony scanned the rest of the room, across from Natasha to the others. Bucky darted his head away possibly a bit too suddenly.

It was one night 5 years ago, there was no way he would recognise him now.

“Pepper is taking the night off in another country across the planet,” Tony said and nothing in his tone indicated he thought something was off, “so hopefully Rhodey will make up for that. Be careful though, he hasn’t been potty trained yet.”

After carefully shifting his gaze back on them, Bucky watched the man – Rhodey sag at that remark.

He gave Tony a stern look. “Did you have to say that?”

“What?” Tony barely look affected by the telling off. “It’s funny. Am I not funny?” he said and Rhodey rolled his eyes.

“You’re the best, Tony,” Steve piped up from beside Bucky.

Bucky had almost forgotten he was still in the room. The arm around his shoulders started to become attuned to his twitchiness and Steve squeezed his far arm slightly.

He spied Tony, across the room, readjust his composure quickly, taking that in. “Says the man with his arm around a stranger,” he said without glancing over.

Bucky tensed then at the attention being drawn abruptly on him.

“A stranger only to you,” Natasha said but Bucky struggled to tell if she meant it in his defence or simply to state a fact, “you’d know his name if you’d been here when I told you the party was starting.”

“In fact, Friday told me about him as well,” Tony said, pointedly, “I almost didn’t let him in the building until saw you two lovebirds play fighting in the elevator.”

At that, Bucky ducked his head. A heat creeping across his cheeks against his will. He didn’t like finding out they had been being watched back then. Steve pulled him into his body and he went willingly.

“Well there’s no need,” Steve said. “Tony, Rhodey, this is Bucky. Bucky, this is Tony Stark and Colonel James Rhodes.”

Bucky gave a simple wave. “Hi, it’s nice to meet you.”

Rhodey’s brow rose in acknowledgement.

Tony kept his eyes solely on Steve. “Was that name calling meant to intimidate me?” he said. “Because it’s hard to take you seriously, Rogers, with brown sauce all over your shirt.”

Steve’s eyes immediately darting down to his chest, spotting the small speckle of brown. He scrunched up a napkin nearby to dab at it, but the sauce had mostly already dried up.

Bucky shot him a sympathetic look; it wasn’t that bad a stain. He probably had one somewhere on himself, he was yet to spot.

“You could change, you know,” Tony’s voice filled the air once more, “and in front of our guest, give him a good show of your ridiculously muscular chest.”

Somehow, this didn’t feel like a usual teasing to come from him. Bucky sensed something genuinely malicious in his tone like he wanted something from Steve, wanted to piss him off. But he couldn’t pinpoint it yet.

“Who’s Friday, by the way?” Bucky said at an attempt to change the subject.

After a couple of seconds, Tony’s mouth remained closed. He looked at him, so had heard his words. But his eyes soon drifted off Bucky and over to the games console, still playing on the TV in the corner. “What we playing tonight anyways?” he said, wondering over to it. “I bought you the latest Assassin’s Creed, have you even tried that yet?”

The sunken feeling in Bucky’s stomach deepened. With no reason to treat him rudely, he gave Tony the benefit of the doubt and assumed he must have not heard Bucky, thought he said something not worth answering.

Bucky settled back into Steve’s arm, awkward now as the shame rose up through his chest like hot steam. He reached forward and put his plate on the table, appetite lost.

Treatment such as this wasn’t uncommon from friends of past boyfriends, but not without reason and certainly not before they even had inkling of his job title. It had been 5 years, he wouldn’t remember him.

Tony could just be like this to all newcomers. His appearance on The Late Show, Bucky had watched last week, certainly showcased this behaviour. He was brash and confident, often commandeering the conversation in his specific way, which sometimes came off as rather rude.

Bucky had learnt his lesson, however, and didn’t plan on asking Tony anything else.

Even on the off chance he had signed Tony’s waiver with his nickname and not his full name, there was still no way he could recognise him, not when they used fake names on the job, not after one night all these years ago, not when he was one of many faces and many names there that evening. Tony couldn’t remember him from just that, Bucky kept telling himself that.

“I wonder why I spoil you all sometimes,” the man in question said. Wondering around the room, Tony picked at the plates of take out. He plucked up a piece of chicken with his bare fingers and stuffed it into his mouth. Chewing down, he grimaced. “Is this Chinese? You know I’m not the biggest fan of Kung Pao chicken.”

Sam still stood at other side of the table, hands on his hips. “Well, we wanted to try something new.” He looked to Rhodey and offered out a hand, “you want some? Feel free to help yourself.”

“If there’s any left?” Rhodey said, “cheers.”

Tony eyed him as he settled on the adjacent sofa. “Rogers likes to eat for ten men when he can help it,” he said with no intention on keeping his voice down.

At that Steve removed his arm from around Bucky’s shoulders and crossed them over his chest. His mood soured as well. Bucky wanted to complain about the sudden lack of support, but saw he wasn’t the only one being targeted here. Tony definitely wanted to piss Steve off.

Carefully, Bucky slipped his hand across Steve’s lap, offering it palm up and thankfully Steve snatched it up. Interlocking their fingers, he pulled it back into his crossed arms.

“Barnes,” Natasha spoke as she shifted where she laid on the sofa to be able to see him.

And Bucky could have sworn he saw Tony perk up at that. The sound of his surname. He tried not to let it get to him and focus instead on Natasha.

“You’ve eaten and it’s our turn,” she said, “pick a song.”

“Uh, I’m good, actually.” Bucky felt bad to reject her.

Her face flickered from a soft smile to an unreadable expression in a second.

He really didn’t want to dance around right now, after the fowl air Tony had managed to stir up. Steve squeezed his hand, where he had it buried at his armpit. A good enough excuse came to his mind, “I think I need to let myself digest the food first,” Bucky said.

Natasha accepted that with a prompt hum. She quickly moved her focus onto someone else. “Tony, you up for it? I’ll still let you pick the song.”

Thankfully Tony accepted and Natasha rolled her body off the sofa in a swift, fluid motion.

As they busied themselves by the TV, Sam came up and sat down next to Bucky. He tapped Bucky’s side, leaning in so he could speak to him and Steve a lot quieter. “One song should get him bored,” he said, “and he’ll head off to go tinker with something downstairs. He doesn’t stay long when Pepper’s not around to soften up his, let’s call them, rougher edges.”

Steve squeezed Bucky’s hand again and said from his other side, “try not to take it personally, Buck. He’s just trying to make up for being late to the party. He’ll warm to you in time.”

Bucky gave them both a soft smile. It didn’t make up for anything, and he wasn’t happy Steve bothered to defend him. In that moment he wanted to tell Steve about the night Tony hired him. That he might have recognised him now and that was why he was treating him this way. He even considered dragging Steve into another room for it.

Steve picked up on his thinking and raised his brow to ask _something wrong?_

Bucky simply shook his head. When Tony danced to the one song and then headed off downstairs, he would explain it all.

It wasn’t just one song. Natasha and Tony got through three songs before they relented. Natasha won every time, and not by some small margins either.

Tony danced like someone strapped a weight to one foot and then attached that weight with long string to the back of his head, all while holding a gun up to his balls. Perhaps the Ironman suit helped in more ways than the news coverage led on. Tony compensated for this by acting abruptly disinterested in the game and claiming he obviously aimed to let Natasha win so she looked good.

Bucky doubted she needed his help in that.

Natasha, herself, didn’t react much to Tony’s gracious comments, giving one of the many closed mouth smiles she’d had throughout the evening.

Sam reckoned he could do better and jumped up to challenge Natasha to a game of his own.

With their music selection playing out while they decided, Bucky’s drinks finally caught up to him. He dug his hand out from Steve’s side and excused himself to the bathroom, before coming back a second later to ask where it was.

Steve directed him to a room down the open corridor, to take another left and it was the first door right at the end.

Now out there, Bucky thought the lights might switch on automatically. When they didn’t, he settled for walking down a long, unfamiliar corridor in the dark. Enough light came in through from the other rooms so he could vaguely make out the way. Almost at the door, he gradually became aware of a figure stood in the shadows.

Bucky’s heart jumped up into his throat. Eyes needing a second to adjust until he recognised who it was. He couldn’t remember noticing when he’d slipped away.

Tony Stark stood with his back to the wall, phone up in one hand, barely illuminating the features of his face. He must have been here for a logical reason, one outside of anything to do with Bucky and that night.

“Oh sorry, did you want to go first—?” Bucky said when he came within range.

Tony didn’t look up. “How much are they paying you?”

Bucky froze. Clearly enough had been enough. He didn’t need context; he knew exactly what Tony meant. The sunken feeling pushed down even further, almost like a real stone rested in his belly.

For his efforts, Bucky tried playing it cool, “excuse me..? I don’t know what—” he started on a breathless laugh.

Glancing up, Tony put his phone away. “If you think you have everyone fooled, you don’t, and here’s why.” The mirth fully disappeared from Bucky’s body as Tony singled in on him. He stepped out of the shadows. No weapon to speak of in either hand and yet Bucky felt in more danger than he had in a long time. “I know _what_ you are, James Barnes. I hired you, in fact, a few years back. You probably thought I wouldn’t remember someone like you, but I do. Your face looked familiar and I couldn’t place it. Then Widow said your name and it just clicked. You’re an escort. That means you’re only here for one reason, Barnes, to exploit money and sex out of my friend. And I’m not gonna let that happen.”

“You’re wrong, I-I’m not—” Bucky took a breath. He’d never been good at confrontation.

Tony, on the other hand, seemed to be, like with all things, an expert. “Yes, you are,” he said, affirmative. He took another step forward, closing the bathroom door with a firm hand.

And, as it slowly clicked shut, Bucky flinched backwards. “Steve and me are—”

“I don’t care who paid you. If it’s one of the others, I’ll find out soon enough, but I’m putting a stop to this right now.”

Bucky stared at the bathroom door handle, unable to make eye contact, and fought viciously against the sting in his eyes. “I’m not being paid, I came here because Steve invited me,” he said, knowing Tony would ignore it, but he needed to try defending himself.

An eruption of laughter came from the other room and that suddenly made his fight a lot harder. Bucky remembered now, he’d been so close to explaining who he was to them, if only he could have gotten out a few more words before Tony arrived. Maybe then he’d be able to call them to his defence for this.

Maybe Steve would still come. But how much could Tony twist this situation in his favour, and he didn’t need more embarrassment right this moment. He didn’t need Steve looking at him the same way Tony was, like he was a liar and a threat. Steve had said he’d been cool with it all, but how much would that stay true, if he found out Bucky had slept with one of his friends.

“See, here’s what’s going to happen,” Tony said, planting himself firmly now between Bucky and the door, “you’re going to leave _now_ and never come back. You won’t speak to Steve or anyone else here ever again. And if I hear you so much as thought about calling or texting him, I will bring down the unimaginable power I possess as not only the head CEO of the most powerful company in the world,” finally Bucky’s eyes darted up to Tony’s face and something earnest shone through the anger, “but as his friend.”

Bucky remained completely still. Didn’t blink or nod. That look on Tony’s face alone nearly made him feel guilty; he didn’t want to hurt anyone, even if the circumstances were twisted into an unfair obscurity.

“Do I make myself clear?” Tony retrieved his phone and the screen illuminated his face once more. “Happy, my personal chauffeur, will see you out down at the main desk,” he said. When he looked up to find Bucky still there, he added, “I would go now before I feel like kicking up more of a storm than I already have.”

Bucky went numb. Turning on his heels, he forced himself to walk away. Towards the corner and around it. Towards elevator at the end of corridor, one foot in front of the other until he made it. Passing by the gap in middle, he hoped no one spotted him and give Tony a chance to make matters worse.

But also hoped they did.

Bucky felt Tony’s eyes on him as he pushed the call button, waited for the lift to arrive, and then stepped inside. Where the sunken feeling had been, a hallow formed in his chest. He didn’t want to leave Steve without any explanation, but getting away from Tony felt so much better.

The lift doors slid shut. Bucky caught a glimpse of Tony, now stood in the corridor opening. Wrecked expression, he glanced back over to the group. He’d never been through anything like what Tony would be feeling right about now. But he’d had it explained to him, on more than one occasion from someone similar, an angry friend or a concerned loved one.

How should anyone react when they think their friend was being lied to? That they were being conned out of time and exploited for their naivety, lying in wait to be laid bare for all their friends to see?

Maybe it was a little how Bucky felt now.

Steve was so different and better in so many ways. And yet some things would always be the same for Bucky, it seemed.

The elevator took the longest time to reach the bottom floor. Nothing compared to like how he felt riding up it with Steve. In the lobby, a man approached Bucky, presumably the aforementioned Happy. Even though he stood at relatively the same height, Happy almost towered over him.

With a sigh, “I need to stop being okay with your dirty work, Tony,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Despite the comment, Happy held a sympathetic expression and gently ushered Bucky away. Going out of his way to make sure no one bothered them, he took Bucky down a flight of stairs that led onto a long corridor, which led onto another set of stairs. Those then eventually opened up to a basement carpark. Their footsteps echoed off the stone walls and the place chilled Bucky to the bone.

Happy showed him into a large, black four-by-four with tinted windows. Getting Bucky’s address, he gave it to the driver, along with a hefty pat on the back, and stepped back to watch them leave.

The tension eased from Bucky’s body as they came up out of the carpark and into the paved street. He kept his head up, staring out of the window, using the city lights to distract himself and stop his body from reacting the way it wanted to while in the company of a stranger. Thankfully the driver didn’t say a word, just silently drove Bucky to his destination and even made no comment when Bucky exited the car without so much as a _thank you_.

Rushing up to his apartment, he locked the door and disappeared into his room, changed into something more comfortable. That usually worked, making his body feel nice to help with his mood. Briefly searching around for Alpine, he felt disappointed when he came up short since petting her was always a guarantee towards feeling better. She must have been out hunting somewhere then. He went back into his kitchen to flick on the kettle and make himself something to drink.

He still had Steve’s number. He could text or ring him, get him alone and explain it all over. But perhaps he should have done that back at the tower, gone up to Steve then and buried himself in his arms until he made Bucky feel better like he always did.

Tony said he would know if Bucky did something like that, though. Maybe he was tracking his phone. It had never been made public the full scope of Tony’s surveillance powers so he didn’t know what of the many rumours were true or fictional. Not that that really mattered.

It hit him hard, all of a sudden, that he might genuinely not be able to talk to Steve ever again. Or at the very least not for some time. Steve wasn’t family and Bucky hadn’t known him that long, only for a few months, but the man had managed to slip his way quite comfortably into Bucky’s life and routines.

Above all else, he had made Bucky feel the happiest, and dare he say the most loved, he’d felt in a long time. He hoped that would have been allowed to continue as he moved further into Steve’s life.

Bucky gripped the kitchen counter, so hard his knuckles began turning white. At the sound of the kettle, the worry rose up and spun around and around in his chest. He tried to hold it back, but nothing seemed to work. It didn’t stop. He blinked. The built-up tears spilled down his cheeks. He would let it out for now, if not to get it out the way. Hunching over, he sobbed.

Bucky hadn’t cried like this since his teenage years, when hormones and school drama took a toll on his emotion state. If he found it hard enough to be taken serious as a sex worker now, it had certainly been something to be an out gay kid in a school in the U.S. He watched the tears drop onto the counter while he staggered his breaths through raw lungs. The turmoil swirling faster and faster.

Three pronounced knocks came at the door.

Bucky tensed, crying coming to a stop, and glanced that direction.

It must have been one of his neighbours, who’d heard him crying, come to check what was wrong. He thought for a long second about just ignoring them. He didn’t know many of them that well. It could have been one of the lesser known ones and he didn’t want to be seen by another stranger right now. But if they’d taken the consideration to knock, they deserved to be politely let down.

Bucky pushed off the counter and went over to answer the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this chapter. I've got a lot of other chapters written to an extent... just need to flesh them out. This was meant to be a later chapter but I switched it up to be the first because of what Tony does. So the next one was originally the first.
> 
> I might also split that one in two, depending on how long it turns out. But I'll upload around about the same time, regardless.
> 
> And also there's a surprise in the later chapters! :D so that should give me the motivation to get that far at least. The only one holding me back is me because I suck!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally I had this bit as the first chapter, but meeting Steve’s friends and the confrontation with Tony seemed like a more interesting opening.
> 
> I read a fic recently that... I think, had a time jump backwards in it, but I missed it the first time reading, so to avoid that same confusion, I put a marker here.

_Four months before_ …

It all abruptly kicked in at once when Steve got left in the side room to change, the polite receptionist drawing the door shut behind them, with a smile, and a vibrant customer service voice.

Simply put, he was a fish out of water. A _too-big-for-the-pond_ fish out of _already-very-mucky_ water.

Steve took a moment to breathe and glance around. Throughout this whole process, the professionalism of everyone around him had maintained his enthusiasm for actually doing this.

Now alone, he wanted to laugh.

This felt so stupid. Not to say that those who did this were stupid, just specifically for him. He felt silly. He wasn’t the type of man to pay for sex. Minus the modesty, he had simply never cared enough to do it. Sure, he’d seen all manner of similar stuff growing up as a bisexual guy in the mid-1930s, but none of that ever came across as being _his_ thing. Sex was something he dealt with _when_ he got there.

Steve certainly wasn’t as prude as Tony often liked to joke. He didn’t go into the ice completely inexperienced and he certainly hadn’t maintained that inexperience this side of the century.

It was more the opposite of that; sex just didn’t stand that high on his list of priorities as compared to others, like those like Tony. Steve had been perfectly fine, his whole life long, not getting any action from someone, in exchange for a good night in or a dance out. He had a list of other things to deal with, both this century and the previous.

But, unfortunately, it went beyond that.

Thanks to something running rampant around his body, changing things, hiding itself away when it caused problems, Steve had been driven nuts in the last few months. That was the prevailing theory at the very least, which made it all the more _frustrating_.

At point, with no sure of the reason why, that led him to where he was now, to try for another solution to this problem.

All thanks to his _perfect_ body.

It didn’t help him in more ways than this one. Steve felt too big in his own shoulders, having always been the tallest one in the room so far.

Yet he paid £900 today to spend the night with a man who would, amongst other things, sleep with him and didn’t wish to take that back one bit. He would try anything. And this seemed like it would be fun. Eyeing the selection of outfits and equipment, they certainly knew what they were doing here.

For one, Steve’s body definitely attracted him his fair share of optimistic sexual partners from all genders. He couldn’t deny that. He’d been with a few people here and there during his years out of the ice, but nothing that stuck. He would be lying if he said, he felt comfortable reciprocating anything with them. There was no way to fairly give the full picture of his life, while getting what he wanted back without a single ounce of discerption. It made him feel dirty.

Whereas here, Steve could bypass that without the need to reveal he was a special agent of the government. It was a separate agreement. Nothing could go wrong, surely?

Steve exhaled loudly.

They must have noticed who he was by now. Regardless of the pseudonym Tony gave him to sign the papers and pay on his card, no way they wouldn’t recognise his face from news reports and interviews.

For the next few hours, that didn’t matter. Steve didn’t have to be Captain America or an Agent special operative or whatever fancy title appeared on his file, he could simply be a guy who paid to have a good time.

Even inside here, a room the clients weren’t meant to spend that much time in compared to others, everything was specifically decorated. Dark colours donned the walls, the lights had been hidden away behind set in benches, a large mirror stretching from ceiling to floor in the corner.

Steve picked out the softest feeling dressing gown and began to strip.

The air rushed in to coat the newly exposed skin. Fighting the shiver, he hurried on and removed his shirt, pants, and shoes. Completely nude, Steve avoided the mirror and wrapped himself up in the dressing gown, tying it shut. No point dragging this out. And the thought of putting on the array of outfits in here would definitely make him feel silly. He would envy the people who could take this sort of stuff seriously, if he didn’t already envy them for many other things.

Before piling his clothes away, Steve checked out some of the other outfits on offer with an extended finger. Being honest, he doubted any of them would even fit him anyway.

When he entered the other room, Steve found it to be empty and quiet. The same coloured donned the walls and the floor. There was a bed and set of shelving on the far wall, with what looked like a black fridge in the corner. He hesitated in the door way for a second, in case he wasn’t supposed to come in here yet. But then remembered he needed a minute to himself, so stepped inside.

Steve sat on the bed. He had no idea who he’d be with tonight, had chosen the surprise option to make this go faster, which involved settling for a mystery person to skip the lengthy-sounding selecting process. All he knew about him was that he would be male and around the same age.

Or the age Steve felt, minus the icy fast-forward period. He doubted any 98-year-old man would be able to help him out today. With anything sex related.

The door opened and Steve snapped alert with military precision.

The man had short brunette hair, flushed pink skin, and stood relatively the same height as Steve, although likely a little shorter. He wore an open gown with only tight boxer briefs on underneath. He looked surprised to find Steve in here but recovered in a short time. Smiling glossy lips, the man walked into the room and shut the door.

Steve didn’t wish to sound like an old sap. His hands itched for a sketch pad and some charcoal. He’d seen plenty of men in his life. And he wasn’t naive enough to not know full well, that this man right now would be done up heavily with hair gel, tailored clothes, and make up. But, for a good second, he thought he’d never seen someone so beautiful.

It certainly helped to relax him and seeing the man’s level of undress made him feel less ridiculous in his own.

“Uh, hi,” Steve said.

“Hello,” the man said, responding. He picked up on Steve’s nerves pretty quickly. “This your first time?”

“Yeah,” Steve said. Then realising what he’d just implied, he added, “I mean, my first time _here_ , not my first time… in general.” He folded his fingers into each other on his lap.

“Most usually aren’t.”

“Huh?”

The man tilted his head, a little sheepish. “It’s just that… normally, you need to get a taste of something before you’re willing to spend nearly a grand on it.”

Steve’s brow rose. “Fair point.”

“What may I call you?” the man said, gently.

That self-conscious itch returned to ran up Steve’s spine. “Uh, Steve is fine.” That hadn’t been the name he put on the form, if this man had read it before coming in here.

“Okay, Steve,” the man said and his name had never sounded sweeter, “how would you like to do this?”

“Oh, um, well,” Steve looked to the expanse of red silk sheets over his shoulder, “I guess we should start on the bed.”

“Alright.” The man walked up and stood before him. He played with the edges of his gown, also made from silk. “Would you like me clothed or naked?”

“Uh, clothed. For now.”

The man pulled one half of his gown all the way open. As well as a better view of his very tight briefs, Steve’s nostrils became engulfed in a fruity perfume. “Is this fine or would like me to change?” the man said.

“That’s fine.” Steve swallowed. It did nothing and he tried again, clearing his throat. “Uh, could you just sit for a second?” he gestured next to him.

“Of course,” the man sat down and turned serious. “Would you like to stop? Considering our current interactions, we’d still be able to issue you a refund. It’s fine if you don’t want to do this.”

“No, no, that’s not what I want,” Steve dismissed the notion with a hand. At least he hoped that would be the case.

He had to admit, it was all well and do thinking over everything about to happen here as a concept. But with a man now in front of him, specifically prepped for his sexual pleasure.

Steve hung his head. “I just need a second. This is a lot to take in at once and I guess I’m starting to overthink.”

The man reached over, lightly touched Steve’s hand, fingers giving Steve’s a small squeeze.

That surprised him and he glanced up to see the man gave a genuine smile.

“Um, is there something I can call you,” Steve said, smiling back, “other than the long list of names they gave me at the door?”

The man thought for a second. “Sergeant.”

“Sergeant,” Steve repeated. He meant a real name but wasn’t going to argue. “Right, I can work with that.” He shifted around on the spot and Sergeant gently retracted his hand. “Look, Sergeant, before we get started, I wanted to make it clear that I don’t want you to put yourself into something uncomfortable just for my… benefit… I’m aware of where I am, I’m aware of how this works but I don’t want you to think I’m like the other…”

Like what? Like the other clients. Other clients who would come in here to fuck someone guaranteed to be pretty and who wouldn’t be able to say no. How many times might this guy have heard that one before? Judging from the look on his face, he knew exactly where this conversation was headed.

How many a white knight had come in here, who swore he wouldn’t fuck him like the other clients, because he definitely respected sex workers. Yet still paid the same money and was willing to go through the same process as everyone else. But unlike them, he would come in here, lie on top of this man, and fuck him, believing he was above it all.

If he really respected this man, he needed to do better than that.

“No, I um… scratch that. This is probably sounding patronising, sorry.” Steve breathed in and out. Taking advice Sarah Rogers always handed to him, he thought about what he’d want to hear if their roles were reversed. “We’re both adults,” he said, “we can have a good time as adults. You know your boundaries, I just want to assurance you, going forward, that I’ll do my best to listen to them. Since this is my first time… I wanted to make that clear, first and foremost.”

Sergeant wore an ambiguous expression. “I can work with that,” he said, shoulders shrugging.

The repetition of his words nearly went straight over Steve’s head. But he recovered with a gradual smile.

Sergeant matched it, another one that was genuine, and Steve dipped back into being the sappy old man again.

He noticed that the nerves were still there, but they’d become much dimmer. “Stand up,” he said and Sergeant did so. Steve took his time to join him, admiring the man who towered over him. Partly for show, but it had the desired when a red blush spread across Sergeant’s face and chest. He continued his examination as he rose to his feet. Like the man had done himself, Steve played with the edges of Sergeant’s gown. “May I?” he asked.

“All yours,” Sergeant said.

Might as well get this over with. Steve removed the gown from Sergeant’s shoulders. It slid to the floor. He opened his own gown and it slid down into a heap at his feet. The air rushed in to exposed places but didn’t feel as cold as he expected.

Raising an eyebrow, Sergeant seemed to have had his own queries about what lay under Steve’s robe diffused. However, he made no comment.

Steve ordered him out of his briefs and Sergeant hooked his fingers under the waist band, slipping them off. As soon as he stepped out of them and straightened up, Steve hauled Sergeant up into his arms.

Sergeant yelped in surprise, his arms wrapping tight around Steve’s neck, legs locking around his middle.

Steve hauled them both onto the bed and gently laid Sergeant down by the headstand. The surprise had been understandable as Sergeant wasn’t on the same level as a super soldier but certainly held a physique too big for an ordinary man of Steve’s size to lift that effortlessly.

Sergeant glanced over his chest, impressed. “You’ve got a hidden strength in you.”

Steve tensed and hung his head to hide his face. He really hoped Sergeant wouldn’t comment more because Steve didn’t know what to say in response. The excuses he’d used numerous times in the past were wearing themselves very thin and he really didn’t want to be Captain America tonight.

Meeting Sam Wilson happened to be one of the only times someone learnt who he was without making an overt fuss about it. But overtime, as Steve discovered, Sam Wilson was a strong outlier and being the Falcon probably had something to do with it.

Despite the fact they now laid flush on top of each other, this manoeuvre had left both men still relatively soft.

A notion came to him and Steve couldn’t help voicing it, for the want of something to break the silence. “Sergeant, do you ever struggle to, you know, get it up for less-than-attractive customers?” he said.

Sergeant turned down his lips, shrugging as much as the space around him would allow it. “Sometimes. For some, it’s a harder struggle than others, I’ll admit. But I’ve never found it particularly that _difficult_.”

“How would you do it, though? Do you go into like a sexy mind set for every new person or do you just really think about someone else’s... nice cock?”

Sergeant burst out laughing at that and Steve found that he loved the sound. He needed a moment to recovery, which did a lot for Steve’s ego, and took Steve’s face in his hands. “Yes, I sit and think about …nice cock and magically …every time my wiener gets hard,” he said, between laughs.

Steve laughed along with him. Sergeant’s fingers fell into the dimples of his cheeks. “Do you have like viagra or something for the days when you’re really not feeling it?”

“Nope,” Sergeant said with a pop of his lips. “I just power through.”

Glancing down to check, Steve saw his own cock swelling semi hard, trapped between their bare thighs.

But Sergeant’s didn’t appear to be doing the same.

Steve couldn’t fight becoming self-conscious all of a sudden.

Maybe seeing pristine skin and perfect abs got old, after a while, and this guy had become more accustomed to the imperfections of humans to spice things up. Odd patches of hair, fat that gathered on one side of the body but not the other, simple things that made humans all human. It went without saying they didn’t reveal their nudity to everyone they met, so maybe it felt like learning a secret.

Steve couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten stabbed or shot. But, wherever it was, he knew for sure it had never managed to scar. He didn’t even have that to rely on.

Sergeant, himself, had a not-so-defined body. He certainly had much bulk, but more from a causal workout and normal body fat, not someone dedicated to gaining a strong physic.

Or that of a super soldier injected with special serum from the 1940s.

“Anything I can do to make that easier for you?” Steve said with a soft smile, his own voice sounding foreign to his ears.

“Oh, I feel it’s not going to be much of a struggle this time, Steve,” Sergeant said, gentler than expected. His voice so low, he was almost whispering.

Steve buried his blush in a flurry of slow kisses along Sergeant’s collarbone. His skin tasted distinctly citrusy and, when he recovered enough from the initial surprise of that, assumed Sergeant must have rubbed an edible body gel on himself to make his body more enjoyable.

Sergeant twitched a little under the contact. “Where shall we start?” he said. When Steve glanced up, he added, “can’t tease me all day.”

Steve leaned in, but hesitated right before they made contact. “We can kiss, right?”

“You’ll hear no complaining from me.”

Steve shortened the rest of the distance. He expected Sergeant’s lips to taste like oranges as well, but got back nothing except a normal lip gloss taste. Pushing deeper, he couldn’t stop himself grinding his hips against Sergeant’s, gaining a breathy groan in response.

Sergeant gripped his shoulders and then slid his soft hands down Steve’s back until they rested just above the swell of his ass.

Steve moaned in encouragement to go further, to explore as he pleased. Sergeant could touch him whenever he liked. He wanted him to, in fact. It must have gotten lost in communication, however, when Steve ran his lips across Sergeant’s exposed throat and Sergeant tightened the grip on his back, pulling Steve’s hip forward for a new brush of delicious friction.

Steve couldn’t decide where he wanted his hands to be, he wanted to touch all of this man. Hoisting a leg up, he let his hand explore down further, tickling Sergeant’s under thigh, over his ass cheek, down towards the rim of his hole. When his finger came away already wet, Steve retracted his hand instantly, frowning at it. He found a clear liquid smeared over the pads of his fingers.

“I’m already prepared… for you,” Sergeant said as explanation.

Steve’s brain briefly short-circuited. “ _Fuck_ , that’s hot.”

Sergeant chuckled at the abrupt declaration.

And Steve wanted to smack his forehead. Of course, Sergeant would be ready to go that was the whole point. Licking his lips, he was going to address that… “Sergeant, would you mind though, if we switched positions?” he said.

Sergeant’s eyebrows shot up. “As in I fuck you?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course,” Sergeant said. He nudged his head towards the shelf across on the wall. “There’s lube in the box over there.”

Steve pulled away to retrieve the small bottle from a collection of different flavours and packaged condoms.

“Would you like me to prepare you?” Sergeant asked, coming up to kneel on the bed.

Steve nodded.

That would probably be the better option, better to leave it to the expert. Steve had been fucked before, but that was half a century ago and back in his other much smaller and much more predictably human body. He hadn’t really had the time since then, and could assume a lot of factors would have _changed_ due to the presence of the serum.

If Sergeant was to be the one penetrating him, it would more feasible that he had control of all those aspects.

Steve climbed back onto the bed. He handed over the lube and condom over and sat there, half-way back on his knees, not sure where Sergeant wanted him to be.

Sergeant glanced him up and down, Steve abruptly became aware of how naked they were, their erections, flush, full and propped up like a pronounced elephant in the room. They should have put on music or _something_ to fill in the room and smooth out the atmosphere. It had been an option on the form, but Steve thought it might have been too distracting. He suddenly felt very silly and the awkward tension pulled along his shoulders, the prospect of this remaining a successful endeavour slipping away.

Maybe it was a common occurrence or he’d dealt with it before and knew what to do. But Sergeant bought the moment back. Putting down the condom packet, he smiled at Steve, slow and closed mouth. Even though Steve was sure it was fake, it did the trick and he couldn’t help smiling back.

Sergeant reached out and took Steve’s wrist, guiding him closer. He re-examined Steve’s body, fingers felt feather light as they trailed it over Steve’s shoulder, down his pec, and around a nipple.

Already, Steve felt himself begin to relax again and he sighed. Sergeant kept his eyes on his hand as he touched down his front.

Sergeant leaned into shoulder, breathing in. As he kissed and licked a trail across to his neck, he ran both his hands through Steve’s hair and pulled his head all the way back, then slid them down to his face to bring Steve back down again. He waited for their eyes to meet and then leaned in for a kiss. Steve let his jaw go slack so Sergeant could take what he wanted.

“Turn around,” Sergeant commanded, lips still against his.

On his knees, Steve shifted around. He felt those feathery-light fingers trail down his spine and delve slowly into the cleft of his ass. There was no lube involved, Sergeant clearly wanted to Steve to get used to the feel of his touch. He swirled his middle finger around Steve’s hole and surprised himself when a small gasp escaped his body. Re-emerging at the other end, Sergeant cupped the bottom Steve’s ass cheek lightly, before dragging his palm down the back of Steve’s thigh.

A bottle clicking open sounded off behind him. Before Steve could think about it, Sergeant crowded up into his space. His hand returned to the cleft of Steve’s ass and pushed inside this time.

“You’re so tight, Steve,” Sergeant’s voice was right behind his ear. His finger swirled around inside him. “It’s too much, we’ll have to do this slowly. Rest your body against mine and we’ll ease into it.”

Steve groaned right from the throat. The stretch didn’t feel good but it didn’t feel bad either. He rested forward on his thighs, mouth open.

“Let me take the lead, okay?”

Steve honestly hadn’t expected to react this much to Sergeant’s touch.

He spent a few minutes playing around inside Steve, slow and methodical, then pressed further up against his back, kissing along Steve’s shoulders. Another hand reached around to Steve’s front and began stroking him off.

Unsure where to go, Steve twitched his hips back and forth. Sergeant stroked his dick slower than he moved his fingers inside of him. And neither were enough. It was torture and they had barely started. On the up stroke, Sergeant twisted his hand at the exact right angle. Steve let out a small whimper that had built up inside of him. “Sergeant…”

“There is it,” Sergeant said. “Let it all out. Relax for me. Gonna make you feel good, you just need to let me.”

And Steve did. He tried for the best of his ability to enjoy this. Enjoy the way Sergeant touched him, how good it was starting to make him feel, when the burn of the intrusion began to fade. He tried to enjoy how nice the man smelled, how soft the bed felt on his knees, how it might feel on his back or bare ass.

Steve could do this. He could be fucked by basically a stranger and make these few hours worth it. He wanted this, yes, just needed to stop thinking so much.

Sergeant curled his fingers, hooking them in a come-hither motion and suddenly something electric shot straight up Steve’s back.

Arching forward as Sergeant found his prostate, he let out a raspy moan, that dissolved into whine when Sergeant removed his fingers shortly after.

He kept his hand on Steve’s dick, however, moved his hand up and down the length of it in long strokes. Abruptly Sergeant reached around and bite down on Steve’s ear lobe.

Steve jolted. “Ah!”

The soft sound of his chuckled filled the air. “We’re nearly there, you’re not so tight now,” Sergeant said.

Steve could hear him fiddle with something crinkly.

He put the condom on and crowded back up against Steve. His lips behind his ear once more. “So how would you like this, Steve?” he asked. “What would you prefer? Hard and fast, I push you down into the mattress while we make some noise. Or a slow fuck, where I make you beg for it, really beg, and only then do I give you what you want.”

Sergeant pushed in then, right as Steve opened his mouth to answer. Slow enough not to hurt, he buried himself to the hilt into Steve’s ass.

Steve grabbed at the hand being used as leverage on his hips, so Sergeant wouldn’t think to stop.

Once relatively settled, Sergeant circled his hips and hummed in response to Steve’s low, breathy whimper.

“Why don’t we, um…. try both, Sergeant?” Steve said. He was going to need it.

“Of course,” Sergeant said, voice velvet smooth. With just that, he started to move.

It always surprised him how good that felt. Sighing into it, Steve loosened his middle, tried to focus on Sergeant’s cock pumping in and out of him. He kept it slow at first, pulling Steve back to lean against him. One hand splayed on his chest and the other returned to Steve’s dick, still wet from earlier.

This could work, Steve enjoyed this.

Sergeant didn’t give him long to get used to it. He thrust in all the way and increased his pumping of Steve’s dick.

Steve definitely had a very hard choice to make.

“You like that, huh?” Sergeant’s voice was a delicate brush on the back of his neck.

Steve hummed.

He pimped Steve’s dick a few more times before a hand planted on the centre of his back was pushing him down into the mattress below. Still in him, Sergeant leaved his hips upwards. Without warning he began pummelling into Steve, keeping the angle good by pinning one of Steve’s thighs against his own.

Steve groaned. He couldn’t believe how close he was, almost not recognising what was happening. A warm buzz spread pleasantly all over his skin. But just when he was about to reach the edge, Sergeant slowed.

Steve let out a whine before he was even aware of his own throat vibrating.

Sergeant chuckled at that, tutting, “not so fast, big guy. You did say both.”

He did.

Steve whined.

For the next few minutes, he was completely at Sergeant’s mercy. He alternated between fast and slow at what felt like a whim. Steve spent the whole time pinned to the mattress and loving every second of it.

The build of his orgasm was slow. Nothing changed, but soon something started to hit the right spot. Up until then, he’d let Sergeant have control, but he honestly needed to intervene.

“Sergeant… please don’t stop.” He fumbled behind to find his hips and encouraging his thrusts.

“Uh-huh,” Sergeant’s voice came from behind. But he did keep at it, thrust into him just how he’d asked, finally snaked a hand around to his front.

Steve didn’t realise how sensitive he was until firm fingers wrapped around his cock, a drip of precum beading at the tip. With a cry, he plummeted over the edge, fisting into the sheet so hard he almost tore them. They would need a wash, anyways.

Steve floated down from his high. Quickly he regained enough of his faculties to turn around, eager to return the favour despite the circumstances. He bore Sergeant backwards down into the mattress, kissing across his stomach with the very clear intent of sucking him off.

“Steve,” Sergeant said, pushing weakly at his shoulders. “I don’t ne-need to come”

“But you want to?”

Sergeant bit his lip in consideration and eventually nodded.

“Then allow me.” Steve settled back between his thighs. Making short work of the condom, he didn’t miss the way Sergeant’s eyes widened a little at that. It soon disappeared when Steve slid his mouth mid-way down his cock. Steve considered going all the way to the hilt, since he could. But knew that would give off the wrong impression and he _wasn’t_ a super-serumed-up man basically lacking a gag reflex.

Sergeant hadn’t been lying. He was barely any struggle. Steve got in a few bobs up and down the length of his shaft, before Sergeant tensed, gasped an urgent warning that Steve kindly ignored, and spilled into his mouth.

He didn’t cry out or even make much of a noise, other than the warning, so Steve settled for a hand tightening on his scalp instead. He looked up, couldn’t see his face but knew well enough that white pleasure would be shooting up his spine.

Blissful expression, Sergeant let his mouth hang open as he sunk further back into the pillow, fully spent. Steve etched the image to memory for a good sketching session tonight. It seemed he didn’t indulge in that part of his job very often.

Steve wiped his mouth to hide the smirk and crawled up the mattress to join him.

Sergeant threw an arm over his head. “I gotta admit, you’re a lot of work, Steve,” he said.

Steve smirked anew. “I’ve heard that one before.”

Sergeant lazily flicked his hand his way, loose at the wrist. “We may even need a minute before I can go another round.”

“That’s fine with me,” Steve said.

Now he had the opportunity he couldn’t resist, while Sergeant lay there catching his breath, letting his eyes wonder over his body. Bare skin, legs that went on for days, the large gathering of hair on his chest. He certainly knew his stuff.

Steve felt very lucky. He had caught his own breath way before his lips even came close to Sergeant’s dick, but feigned a little heavy breathing, just to be sure. He shuffled around an inch and thought of something to say. “So, uh, Sergeant, is this your room specifically or do you get given a random one with each customer?”

The room looked similar to all the other parts of the building, dark walls, hidden lights. Everything except the ceiling, which had been painted to look like a galaxy imitation of purples, pinks, reds, and blues. Steve imagined each room had its own theme to service different fantasy purposes or provide a mix of scenery for regular customers.

Sergeant peeped at him from behind his arm and then lowered it. “This is my room, while I’m here. But it’ll see some action on my days off. I have to maintain it, make sure it was all set up for you.”

“Such as clean the sheets and the like?”

“ _Send_ them off to be cleaned otherwise, I wouldn’t have time to entertain you.”

“Yeah, of course.”

Steve couldn’t miss the way Sergeant kept bringing the subject matter back to him and phrased everything in a way that made him sound special compared to the other clients, that it went unsaid that Sergeant had to service. Surely this sort of talk didn’t genuinely work on anyone?

Steve understood it was bit in the job, but couldn’t stop it from grating at him. Some people wanted to explore the fantasy and that was fine. Maybe it was his honest nature, but Steve just wanted to break the point and admit what this really was, without being constantly coddled.

Sergeant rolled onto his side and propped his head up on an elbow. “What are you thinking?”

Steve turned his head. “The space theme your idea?”

A flicker of something, maybe surprise, appeared behind Sergeant’s eyes. Steve was kicking himself for having not taken more of Natasha’s lessons at reading people.

“You mean the ceiling?” Sergeant said.

“Yeah.”

Sergeant crooked his brow. “Check this out,” he rolled over to the other side of the bed and reached out for something, “if you like it.”

Whatever Sergeant touched made a click sound and the lights went off, revealing a fresh layer of paint on the ceiling that glowed in the dark, interwoven with its current colours.

“Oh, nice,” Steve rose up on his hands to admire it.

“I picked it for a reason,” Sergeant said.

“Do you guys have any glow in the dark condoms? “Cause, you know, that would be fitting in a room like this.”

Sergeant’s face lit up. “We don’t but,” he fell back against the bed on a laugh. “God, I’m gonna suggest that now,” he said.

“I’m surprised you haven’t thought of it already.” Steve watched the laughter leave Sergeant’s body and he really wanted to ask for his real name. But if he’d wanted to give it out, the opportunity had been there and Steve only wished to retrieve it on open, fair terms.

“Wait.” Steve caught him by the shoulder when Sergeant went to flick the switch again. “Keep the light off,” he said, leaning in for a kiss as he climbed over onto Sergeant’s lap.

They got through one more round before Steve’s time was up. Perhaps they could have made it a round three, but Steve got too caught up listening to Sergeant talk again.

Somehow, they even missed the Sergeant’s personal dinger. So much so that someone had to come knock on the door to check on him.

After a few firm knocks, voice came from the other side, sounding genuinely concerned, “ _hey, Bucky, you alright in there?_ ”

Steve’s heart jumped in his throat, he hadn’t been expecting it. They might think all manner of things had happened, that Steve had hurt him in some way and he felt a little bad for worrying them.

Sergeant’s head whipped over to the door, “uh, yeah, just these silk knots, you know how they are.” Steve recognised a code phrase when he heard one. Sergeant turned back to him, “sorry, time’s up.”

“Should have let me know I was keeping you,” Steve said, hoping to make him laugh.

Sergeant didn’t respond, just hid whatever he could be feeling under another smile.

Steve got up from the bed along with him and abruptly became aware of his own nudity again as he watched Sergeant slip back into his briefs. Pulling the silk robe over his shoulders, Sergeant pulled it closed this time and tied it over with a knot. It was the most dressed Steve had seen him.

Steve’s clothes were still back in the other room. He reached down and grabbed the robe he’d used, feeling rather dismissed. Not bothering to put it on, he disappeared into the other room, and shut the door.

Steve dressed quickly. He remembered right before leaving that he wanted to tip the guy. Worried he’d missed his chance, he hurried back to the door and flung it open to find Sergeant nearly right behind it with one hand raised.

The façade had gone and he looked like a deer caught in headlights. “I don’t normally do this but here,” lowering his arm, Sergeant held out a piece of paper, “my name is Bucky, as you probably just heard, and that’s my number.”

Whatever he’d thought the man would say, it certainly wasn’t that. The next time he saw Nat he was getting her to teach him more body language skills.

“Um, I’m flattered but,” Steve started and hurt instantly flooded Sergeant – Bucky’s – face, even if his need to hide it kicked in a second later. The panic stabbed through Steve and he quickly fumbled on to add, “—no, no, I didn’t mean it like that, I’m happy to take your number, but it’s only fair if I leave that decision to you.”

Bucky stared at him. “Which means?”

“Uh, um… let me just show you. Here,” Steve gestured for the pen. Bucky handed it over and he scribbled down his full name and number under Bucky’s, “why don’t you take my number, google me, and then if you still wanna talk, feel free to text me,” he said, holding both of them back out to him.

“Google you..?” Confused, Bucky took back the paper, read what Steve had written down, and his eyes widened in surprise. “Oh. _Oh_ ,” he said.

“Yeah…” Steve said, rubbing at his nape. Stupid to be self-conscious now after all they had just done to each other, but he really didn’t want to be the Captain tonight.

Bucky regarded him once more as if he were seeing him for the very first time. It immediately appeared like several connections were slotting together in his head, whether he wanted them to or not.

“Like I said, I’ll leave that to you, Bucky.” Steve liked the way the name rolled off his tongue. Deciding to give Bucky a moment to process that by digging out his wallet, he retrieved a few hundred-dollar bills. “I know you don’t just get given the money I paid for tonight so here. Thank you very much for your services,” he said and firmly clapped the money into Bucky’s hand.

Bucky took it well. “Uh, thanks, there’s no need, though. It’s what I do,” he said. His face lit up once more when he realised how much he’d been handed.

Doing one last check of his things, Steve smoothed his shirt down and left the rooms hastily, before Bucky could even think about handing any of the money back.

Or perhaps his phone number. Although, Steve doubted that.

¬

And they both knew Bucky did not need to google him. His reaction had said as much.

Sometime past midnight, Steve returned from a mission several days later, high on adrenaline, but also incredibly exhausted. He crashed into bed, smelly and still covered in gunshot residue and, hopefully, someone else’s blood, with a plan to wash it all off tomorrow, clean everything away. Right before sleep claimed him, however, his phone buzz from where he’d dumped it on the bed side table.

Steve considered ignoring it at first until the morning. But maybe Natasha wanted him to inform her when he made it home safely. He owed her that much after what they’d just been through that day.

Squinting at the light, Steve lifted the phone up in one hand. He did have a message from Natasha, although she wanted to meet up in the morning. Below that, he also had another one from an unsaved number:

_Why didn’t you get me to call you Captain? With you calling me Sergeant, that would have been really hot._

Steve exhaled through his nose, smile buried into his pillow. He'd sketched him for days on end to buy the time, it certainly hadn’t sketched been enough yet.

It promptly buzzed again.

_It’s my day off tomorrow. If you’d like to share a lunch? I’m buying, Captain. ;)_

Steve replied with a simple “ _sure”_ , he’d hash out the details in the morning. He saved Bucky’s number, and then finally drifted off to sleep, now very much looking forward to the next day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m basing my experience of what a sexual establishment would be like on… either a Stephen Fry or Billy Connelly documentary I watched maybe over 5 years ago now, where he went to one and interviewed a woman working there. Don’t know if that memory came back to me randomly and inspired this fic, or it was the other way around.
> 
> The next chapter will jump back to the present time, and show how Steve reacts to what Tony did, just need to hash out the smut at the end and it'll be done.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And back to the present!
> 
> I've rewritten this so many times, I just need to get it out there tbh and review it a little later.

Bucky hadn’t returned from the bathroom.

It had been over 10 minutes now and there was no sign of him. Steve checked his phone and found nothing there, no texts of help or explanation. He didn’t want to think too much of it, tried not to. Anyone could be inclined to take a while in unfamiliar surroundings. Bucky was probably busy sorting out other things, or needed to do more than he let on.

But when Tony returned, from god knows wherever he’d disappeared off to, before Bucky, a gut feeling inside of Steve said something must have been up. This wasn’t right.

From where he sat, Steve eyed Tony as he returned to his seat. His shoulder hung low, something genuine peeking through on the features of his face. That only happened when he needed to tell them some bad news.

Steve knew already that he didn’t want to hear it. Getting up, he shuffled past Sam and Rhodey’s legs to make a quick beeline off towards the bathroom.

Half-way out the room and Tony spoke. Steve had felt his eyes on him the entire time he moved, so wasn’t exactly surprised.

“There’s no point going to check on Barnes,” Tony said.

Steve stopped in his tracks. There shouldn’t have been a correlation here, with Bucky leaving the room the same time as Tony, and then only one of them returning.

But if anyone would have something to say about Bucky and his job, it would be Tony. Steve wasn’t sure how Tony found out. Maybe he googled him or face searched him through an invasion of privacy, or however that worked. Tony had a whole array of facial recognition software set up on every floor of this tower, it could have been from that.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Steve said, plainly.

Tony exhaled loudly, waited for Steve to turn around before continuing, “you might want to sit down for this one,” he said gesturing back to Steve’s previous spot, the expression on his face surprising sympathetic.

Steve marched over to the sofa and sat back down, holding his tongue for now.

Tony took the remote control and muted the TV. He put his head in his hand and rubbed it along his face, pinching the bridge of his nose as he always did when he struggled to find the best phrase or correct wording for what he wanted to say. Like he was already upset with the words before they’d left his skull.

Steve planned to let him say it. See where this would go, before he would intervene.

“If one of you did this as a prank, I’m not angry,” Tony started, voice calm. “Don’t really have a right to be, when I’m not the one it’s been aimed at. But maybe, in the future, keep this to a more public gatherings and make it a lot more obvious, of course, so it doesn’t have to come across as this cruel. Hopefully we can all laugh at it at the next event, but right now…”

Because something that worked out surprisingly well last time for Thor, a man from another world, who could take Tony hiring a woman at party to “pretend to enjoy his company” as a joke. Yes, that was exactly the same thing Nat or Sam would think of as fun for Steve too. Especially after she refused to take a dime of Tony’s money and even ended up in a short relationship with an Asgardian. This was starting to sound familiar.

Confusion spread across the room as every one of them slowly worked out who he was talking about.

Natasha barely reacted, stared Tony down. Rhodey did the same, but with less of a grip on his emotions.

Sam glanced towards Steve, holding a questioning expression. When Steve didn’t respond with a shrug, when he instead sat back against the back of the sofa and pursed his lips, Sam appeared to have almost worked it out. Or at least whose side of it, he needed to be on.

“Maybe it wasn’t one of you,” Tony continued, “if that’s the case, we have a rather serious breach of security because Barnes managed trick his way into your life, Rogers, and you had no idea that he—”

“No idea of what? That Bucky is a prostitute,” Steve said.

All eyes turned to him.

“You knew?” Tony said slowly.

Steve cast his eyes across the room. He didn’t need to explain any of this. Bucky had been moments away from explaining this himself, before Tony had barged in.

Right now, Steve easily settled his eyes on the man opposite him. “Not that it’s any of your business, but how do you think we met?” he said and Tony’s eyes widened. “I hired Bucky for his services, yes. But he was here with me tonight because I wanted him to be here, to meet my friends as my boyfriend. Bucky is capable of being like that to someone. If were going there, he doesn’t need your permission to date me.”

Tony didn’t break eye contact. In the corners of his vision, Steve could make out the others all share quick glances to each other.

“I, uh, recognised him from a private gathering I organised a few years back,” Tony said, spewing out his defence, “I thought he was—I didn’t think it was… that you two were like serious. I thought the only reason he was here was as a prank for you. I thought he was manipulating you without your knowledge and so I did what I could to prevent that.”

Steve huffed. How wrong it had been of him to have expected an apology. If allowed, Tony would keep spinning and spinning this into a scenario that made him look like a victim as well.

And Steve could forgive it, he really could.

When broadly speaking, Tony didn’t know of the nature of their relationship and had come to his own conclusion as to why Bucky was here. He only wanted to help, in his own twisted way.

But that wasn’t the case. His gut told him something else was missing as well.

Because Steve should have found out about this first, it should have been a conversation between friends on equal footing. Instead of Tony going behind his back and assuming the worst of Bucky because he’d met him through a job and, for some reason, struggled to see him as person outside of that.

Steve singled in on Tony once more. “What have you done?” he said, eyes narrowing. After Tony didn’t answer, he kept pushing, “you know he’s not coming back, so that means you must have done something. Please tell me you just had a word with him, upset him, and he ran off of his own accord. Because, with all your vast intelligence and with how massive your ego is, you certainly wouldn’t have confronted him on your own and kicked him out of the building yourself, would you? Not when it turned out you were wrong.”

Tony’s mouth remained a tight line. That was an answer in of itself.

“Did you threaten him?”

Tony, at least, bothered to seem guilty over that. “I wouldn’t …have actually done anything if he’d gotten in contact with you again,” he said with a very small voice, directly into his drink.

“Of course, you wouldn’t,” Steve said, firmly. “And to think I actually defended you, after you went out of your way to directly make Bucky feel like shit. Goddammit, Tony! You should have come to me first!” Anger boiled in his blood as he drew his hands into fists.

“What kind of gathering?” Sam said, swooping in to save them both.

Steve’s head snapped straight across to him.

“You said you met Bucky for a gathering that _you_ organised,” Sam said, “what kind?”

Tony shifted awkwardly on the spot. “One where people would be free to explore sexual activities and fantasies in a large environment of other likewise individuals,” he said.

“So an orgy,” Rhodey summarised.

Steve had heard enough. He stood up. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to head off now to find Bucky and check on him. Sam, Nat, Rhodey,” they glanced his way, “hopefully we can do this again sometime, I’m sure Bucky had fun. And you’re always welcome to join us, Rhodey. …Tony,” he waited until the man looked up at him, “any time you think of apologising, we’ll be ready.”

Tony reacted plain faced and stoic, probably still believing he was in the right.

Steve wouldn’t hold his breath. He didn’t have the energy left to care. That said, he walked out the room and didn’t look back.

Steve got his bike from the carpark, started it up, and rode out.

Stopping at a red light along the way, he ran a hand over his face and quickly realised just how much anger he still had stored in his body. He’d been gripping his bike handles with almost enough strength to dent them. In a way Bucky had tried to tell him all on his own and if only Steve had taken a moment to listen, he wouldn’t have to go through this.

A car honk behind him wretched Steve back to where he was. Tilting up his bike, he drove through the now green light. He needed to calm down if he wanted to comfort Bucky after all this. He didn’t want to scare him off. Or worse, accidently make him think he was mad _at_ him.

Steve really wished Tony had come to him first.

Making it to Bucky’s place a few minutes later, Steve cocked the bike in the nearby bike shed and dashed inside. Lucky for him, someone else was heading out of the building as he came up the stairs. He kept his head down and thanked them, before practically sprinting to the lift and hitting Bucky’s floor. When it nearly took more than a minute to get to him, he considered running up the stairs instead, but the lift dinged in time to prevent that idea.

The corridor was empty when the lift doors opened. Slipping out sideways, Steve power-walked to Bucky’s flat door and raised his fist, knocking twice, then threw in a third one just to be sure.

The silence that followed nearly killed him. What if Bucky hadn’t gone home. What if he was somewhere else right now, across the city. If Steve called, would he even pick up.

Finally, footsteps approached and Bucky opened his front door. His face was flushed, cheeks red, eyes shiny, and he’d changed into a shirt and some slacks. He seemed surprised to find Steve here at first regard, but that quickly morphed into what looked like caution.

Steve smiled in an attempt to soothe him. “Hey, Buck, can I come in?” he said. “We, uh, well, probably shouldn’t have this conversation in the corridor.”

Bucky said nothing. He nodded, stepping aside to let Steve come in.

Steve led the way inside and, door barely shut behind them, he started, “I’m so sorry about what Tony said and what he did to you, Buck. I came here as soon as I found out.”

“It’s fine,” Bucky said. His voice sounded wrecked.

“No, it’s not,” Steve insisted as they settled into the kitchen.

Bucky got a bottle out of the fridge, held it firmly to his chest, but didn’t open it. He hung his head. A few locks from the top of his head fell loose. The shirt he wore was a few sizes too big and had been nearly worn through. Steve noted it made him look very small and soft. He didn’t plan to sleep yet though, Bucky usually did that shirtless.

Steve remained stood nearby, keeping his distance. He hated that he didn’t know what the right thing to do here was. “I even defended his shitty treatment of you. Then he goes and does that. I wish I could’ve worked out what he’d been planning. He can be so hot and cold sometimes, and that’s saying something in the room with a spy and a super soldier.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve treated that way,” Bucky said, eyes still to the floor. He gave a dry laugh. “Almost forgotten what it felt like.”

Steve hated every word of that. He hated that this wasn’t even the first time, that it seemed a common enough occurrence. So much so that Bucky almost expected it. “I’m so sorry,” was Steve could say, even if it didn’t hold anything anymore. When he then caught Bucky tensing at the words, he cursed himself for always being awkward and bad at comforting people.

A distant memory of him trying and failing to do something similar with Peggy popped to mind. When she’d watched Private Thomas get a green light for his plan over hers, after being there for three whole weeks less, and disappeared into the forest to kick at some trees. Steve had been the only one to found her and they had sat on a soggy log in the miserable Belgium drizzle, while Peggy cried onto Steve’s uniformed shoulder. She never lied to him and after several attempts, told Steve to promptly shut up because his _bullshit comforts_ were not working. He kept trying anyways, because he was Steve and it seemed honesty turned out to be the best bet.

“I know I’m not Tony,” Steve tried being honest now, “but that’s all I think of to say. I’m sorry I didn’t see this coming and I feel partly responsible because I’m the one who invited you. I know that’s not how it works though…. I don’t think Tony’s ever going to apologise. But I’ll try my damnedest to make sure he never has another chance to hurt you again.”

Bucky sniffled and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. His eyes didn’t look red, yet all the evidence pointed in one direction.

“Oh great and you’ve even been crying.”

Bucky’s eyes went wide. “This isn’t— I’m not…”

“It looks a little bit like crying to me,” Steve said gently. He walked up to him and reached a hand out to his shoulder, not sure if he should touch him yet. “It’s okay to cry, even when you’re not sad.” If his years of service and fighting in the war had taught him one thing, it was he didn’t have the greatest handle on his emotions.

Depending on what they were, it could sometimes better to simply let them out and have their way, than to keep it all bottled up inside. He often found the modern world really didn’t encourage men to make time for that. If he could be there for Bucky in that way, it was enough.

Bucky sighed deeply, sniffed, and padded over to the kitchen counter. He put the bottle down, unopened.

Steve waited for him to organise the words he wanted to say.

“Do you know how many times I’ve dated a guy,” Bucky said and coughed wetly, “and two weeks in, three weeks in, he’ll say something along the lines of _you know, you wouldn’t have to work anymore if I just picked up extra hours, right_?” He turned then, to face Steve, “or they’re surprised when I call my parents or one of my sisters come round and I still have a good relationship with them all. Or, the fucking worst of it… that they’re genuinely surprised I was never assaulted or abused as a child. Every time, they try to act like my job isn’t a problem. And even if it’s genuinely not, then that’s it, we're never allowed to talk about it. They don’t want to think about someone else touching me. Steve, you’re the first to… just let me exist how I _am_ and that not be a thing. You even engage with me on it.”

Steve let out a small smile. It pained him to know how bad it had been for Bucky throughout his life. But he’d be as naive as the night they met, if he ever thought having a job like that would turn out any other way. He doubted Bucky needed to hear what he already knew.

“And believe me, you’re not perfect by a mile,” Bucky continued, “and you’ve still done some stupid things. But any time I’ve pointed them out, you seem to do your absolute fucking best to make it up to me, no matter how small.” Bucky sniffed once more, wiped his face and met Steve’s eye. His eyes were red and his voice suddenly came out croaky as the emotion became too strong. “And, no offence, you’re a guy _literally_ from the 40s, if anyone should be judging me and treating me like I’m his property you’d think it would be you. But, instead, you’re so _good_ to me and you make me feel so happy, Steve.”

Steve wanted to comfort him, pull him into a hug and never let go. He could tell Bucky wasn’t quite finished yet.

“What Tony did made me feel like shit and I think I need a break from that part of your life. Perhaps for a while, even if you’ve explained it all to your friends. I just… I need time to think.”

That was perfectly fine, Steve would give him all the time in the world.

“But, in a horribly twisted way, all this gave me a new perspective on things, on us, and what you mean to me. So, yes, at the prospect of never seeing you again, I might have felt like, amongst other things, crying my fucking eyes out.”

Steve jumped forward then, unable to stop himself, and hauled Bucky into a crushing hug. One hand wrapped around his middle and the other cradled his head.

After taking a second to recover, Bucky hugged him back just as tightly.

They stood there, locked together, for a long minute.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Steve said into the croon of Bucky’s neck. “I swear.”

“Steve,” Bucky said, voice shaky. “I’m glad you came back.” The shock of the situation finally returned to tumble over full force, overwhelming him. He sobbed into Steve’s shoulder.

Steve soothed him as best he could, rubbing large circles onto his back and between the shoulder blades. Whispering whatever he thought might help. “Tony had no right to do that to you and I’m sorry I wasn’t there to stop him. It’s okay now, it’s okay,” he said.

“I know…” Bucky said, his voice very quiet, Steve almost didn’t hear. “I’ll be fine. I just need a second.”

Steve shifted his arms to pull Bucky even close than he was. So close and flush, he could start to feel Bucky’s heartbeat through their chests. “Take the time you need.”

For a while Bucky remained silent, he hugged Steve back just as tight, until his heartbeat began even out to a steady pace. When they finally let go, his eyes were still wet.

Steve tried to wipe away a straw tear with his thumb, but it didn’t have the desired effect he’d seen in the romantic movies, and almost ended with him pocking Bucky in the eye. The tear felt rather gross on his skin as well and he made a noise of disgust, drying it off on his jeans.

It managed to rouse a laugh from Bucky, so he considered that a win.

Bucky sobered for a moment as they regarded each other. “Would you… Steve, would you stay the night?”

How late had it gotten? Steve glanced to the clock on the microwave.

 _23:44_.

“Of course,” he said without thinking, then realised, “I wouldn’t have anything to wear, though.”

“I can lend you a shirt.” Bucky’s eyes became pleading. “I’m pretty sure our waists are the same size, so my underwear and slacks should fit you.”

Steve didn’t need convincing. “Okay, I’ll stay,” he said.

They would think of something. But for now, he could make things right and be here for Bucky.

¬

Neither of them had work tomorrow. Bucky did have an appointment to meet, but he knew that would be quick, and Steve needed to head to the tower for some new form of training. So they would be able to stay up, but nothing too late.

Bucky tickled on the edge of it. When he came back from finishing the dishes, which he refused to let Steve even help with, insisting that as the guest he go get comfortable in the bed instead, and climbed under the covers himself to join Steve over half an hour later.

Steve sat in a pair of Bucky’s red boxers and one of Bucky’s other baggy shirts, one that was still too small. Both of which smelled sweetly of Bucky’s detergent. The sheets he sat on smelled of Bucky too, as said man emerged from the door.

“Alpine did not want her medicine tonight,” he said, pulling open his side of the duvet.

It took Steve an embarrassing long second to register who he meant there. Bucky’s all-white cat that he’d only seen a very few times so far. Due to Bucky’s work hours, he couldn’t keep her locked indoors, so she only visited whenever seemed to please her specifically. Because, after all, she was a cat.

“It’s like she could sense what I’d put in it.” Bucky buried his long, slender legs under the covers. Shirt off, like always when he finally went to bed. “I’m pretty sure someone else has been feeding her. Which is probably how she got ill in the first place. I wish I could keep her in for a bit to make sure she’s gotten better, but work just doesn’t allow me to.”

“I’d offer to have her, but my work schedule isn’t exactly ideal either,” Steve said. Bucky raised one of his arms and snuggled up into it. He couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across his face, squeezing Bucky in close as a response.

“If I’m being honest, she’s probably fine,” Bucky said. “I’m pretty sure it was just a stomach bug that’s passed and the vet just wanted to sell me some pills.” Shaking his head, he looked off to across the room. Steve couldn’t see his eyes but he imagined they were probably glossed over and distant, “there was just so much shit and hairballs, I didn’t know she had it in her. It really worried me for a good second.”

Steve remembered the panicked texts and horrifying set of pictures he’d woke up to before his morning run, the week previous. He’d offered to meet Bucky at the vet’s and help clean up afterwards, but Bucky swore he didn’t want Steve associating his apartment with that horrendous smell.

It was that bad.

Exhaling on a deep sign, Bucky cuddled further into him.

“Are you feeling better then, by chance?”

“Yeah, I’m feeling _much_ better,” Bucky said, voice already a little raspy. “I want you.” A hand began to snake across Steve’s chest.

“You can have me, Buck,” Steve said. He gently caught the hand by the wrist. “But I’m calling the shots.”

Bucky’s eyes darted straight up to Steve’s, analysing his gaze, searching for something and it felt like he could see right through him.

He hoped not by too much.

After a second, Bucky agreed in silence and gave a sharp nod.

Steve smiled, slow and hungry. “I want you to lie on top of me,” he said. “Face up.”

Bucky frowned. “On top of you?”

Steve pushed him away enough to shuffle further down the bed until he lay flat with his head on the pillow.

Confused, Bucky still followed suit and allowed himself to be manhandled to lie directly on top of Steve’s frame.

“And get comfortable, you’re gonna be here a while,” Steve said.

Like this, they appeared so similar, slotting together almost exactly as the ball of Bucky’s foot bumped directly onto Steve’s toes. It took a quite a bit of careful manoeuvring and the folding of Bucky’s other pillow as his headrest to get it comfortable enough for both of them. This way it would like Bucky was jerking himself off. But instead he just had to lie back and enjoy it, while Steve did all the work.

“I’ll admit,” Bucky said, “you’re surprisingly comfy for a someone who’s 90% muscle.”

“What’s the other 10?”

Bucky ground his hips on Steve’s crotch as an answer.

A low groan rumbled up from deep in Steve’s chest and he made sure his mouth was right next against the shell of Bucky’s ear. When they were like this, he could feel every ripple of tension throughout his body.

“What are we gonna do once I’m comfortable?”

“That’s for me to decide and for you to enjoy,” Steve said, before adding, “hopefully.”

Bucky found Steve’s hand with his own. “I don’t want it to be perfect, I want it to be you.”

Something warm and soft instantly blossomed inside Steve’s chest. He gave Bucky’s hand a firm squeeze before letting go. “Right,” _cough_ , “well, these,” he fiddled with the band of Bucky’s boxer, snapping them up and down lightly, “will have to go.”

“If you want them gone…” Bucky didn’t need to turn his head for Steve to know he was grinning.

He nudged Bucky’s hips as indication to lift them. Slipping fingers under the waistband, Steve slid them down onto Bucky’s thighs, out of the way. Keeping his thumbs underneath as he moved them under the swell of Bucky’s ass cheeks, he dug a little into the pulp flesh and didn’t miss the way Bucky’s heartrate increased. Bucky leaned down into the touch.

Now exposed, Steve got his fingers very acquainted with Bucky’s dick. Experimenting with friction, he tapped rapidly along the shaft, circled one set of fingers around and lazily stroked back and forth.

As predicted, Bucky was almost getting impatient. “You plan on tickling me all night?”

“Just until I have your attention.”

“You might have to do a little more to get it.”

Steve knew when to take a hint. He would have to speed it up first before he could slow it down again. Grabbing the lube that had its usual place on the nightstand - Bucky lived alone after all - he poured a generous amount on his hand.

That piqued some interest from Bucky. “I said a little more. Not this much.”

“Just focus on being comfortable, okay? And leave it to me,” Steve said, confident. He began to stroke up and down Bucky’s shaft, until it curled upward, fully erect. Bucky let a pleased groan and that was when Steve slowed it right back down again to a more leisurely pace.

He planned to keep it right there. Steve would stay with the slow and long stroking until Bucky became a begging mess on top of him and, even then, he would see if he could make Bucky come from just that.

Bucky exhaled above him, relaxing onto Steve’s body as he was gotten off. Steve’s hand snaked up his chest and pinched a nipple, causing him to let out a yelp. Bucky reached his hand back to bury it in Steve’s hair.

It didn’t take long for Steve’s arousal to start pocking at him. He felt Bucky shift around until it was moved out of the way and laid flat down, still caught in the boxers and trapped under Bucky. He huffed out a groan at the contact, his breath tickling against Bucky’s ear.

They stayed like this for a while as Steve continued the slow, tortuous pace up and down Bucky’s cock. He played with Bucky’s chest some more and ran kisses across every bit of skin he could reach, sucking a mark behind Bucky’s ear, and several more down his neck.

All the ministrations added up and eventually Bucky began to twitch above him, breath coming in short and quick. He moaned, low and raspy, and finally moved his hand down over Steve’s to encourage him to go faster.

Whining, when he found he couldn’t do anything, Steve using his super strength to prevent him from changing a thing.

Bucky turned his head, “please, Steve…”

He had Bucky right where he wanted him. “Sorry, buddy, we’ll get there. But it’s gonna be very slowly,” he said and Bucky whined again, hips twitching up to get more rough contact. But Steve quickly put a stop to that by bring his hand down to the base and leaving it there until Bucky stopped.

Eventually, Steve moved his hand down to join the other. “Mind if I get something in you?”

“What were you thinking?”

“Fingering you.”

“Oh, my ass is all yours, captain,” Bucky said, just managing to get that sentence out before a chuckle shortly followed.

Steve twisted his wrist just so and the laugh quickly morphed into another whine. “Thank you kindly, sir,” he said, grinning. But his smile faltered for a second, “keep me posted on whether this feels bad or not. I don’t wanna hurt you by accident.”

They hadn’t done much, sex wise, bar from the night they met and Bucky blowing him on the evening of their first date. Bucky never minded about that and never said anything. But it meant he wasn’t sure yet to the full extent of his strength in regards to Bucky’s body. He wasn’t sure how hard he could push or shove or thrust without causing Bucky some genuine harm. Partly why he had him lying back and letting Steve take control, be slow and gentle.

But also because he wanted the focus solely on Bucky and nowhere near himself.

Retrieving the lube bottle, Steve began to slick up the fingers of his other hand.

“What about if it feels really nice?” Bucky jerked around his lower body in anticipation.

“I’d want to hear that too,” Steve said, planting a kiss behind his ear, near the marks he made earlier. He took Bucky’s cock back in hand again. It became little awkward with his now-slippery hands, the lube bottle went flying as he tried to put it down.

Steve moved Bucky onto his side so he would have access to both areas. Delving into Bucky’s cleft, he circled around his entrance.

Sweat had started to form on Bucky’s forehead. He gripped the pillow supporting his head and inhaled suddenly when the first finger slipped in.

Steve kept up his slow strokes once again, while he explored inside Bucky’s body.

Mumbling at him incoherently, Bucky responded to every practically movement with either a twitch or a gasp. At first Steve worried he was hurting him but he’d promised he would say if that were the case. He did this for a living and yet Steve remembered that Bucky would often have to prepare himself for his clients, unless they requested other wise once in the room. How long had it been since someone had done this for him?

It wasn’t much of a wait and he got the second finger in. Not planning for anymore, this was enough to get what he wanted. He bided his time until Bucky became just as worked up as before, then pushed deeper and went looking for Bucky’s prostate.

Abruptly Bucky jerked his hips forward. “Ah, ah, Steve, right there! Oh shit!” He stretched out his body, back arching, nearly crushing Steve’s hand. “Don’t stop.”

Steve didn’t want to, certainly didn’t plan to. Pulsating on that spot again and again, he squeezed his other hand around Bucky’s cock. When he reached the tip, he thumbed over the leaking slit. “Is that what you want, Buck? This good enough for you?” he said.

“Ah, the fucking best,” Bucky said instantly and bore back against Steve’s hands. His body tensed as he came between Steve’s fingers, a few streaks of white reaching up his stomach. He let out a low, groaning, “ _fuck_!” and then promptly went limp on top of Steve’s body.

Planting a sweet kiss against his damp hair, Steve extracted his fingers. He wiped them down on his boxers, only just remembering they were Bucky’s. Although he doubted he would mind right about now.

Bucky hummed at the release, closed eyes with a happy smile. He rolled off and pulled himself up right, went to climb onto Steve. “Wanna suck you off,” he said, lips coming down to kiss Steve’s chest.

“Uh, maybe another night, Buck,” Steve said, “I’m fine right now.”

Bucky raised his head and gave him a look, probably assuming he was just being modest or considerate that maybe Bucky needed a minute. “Come on, I’m not leaving you hanging after _that_ ,” he said, dismissing any of that. He leant back down.

Steve sat up. “Bucky, please, just stop,” he said gently as he could.

Everything came to a shuddering halt.

Bucky nearly bumped his forehead right into Steve’s chest as Steve shuffled back out from under him. Getting a bit of distance between them, an unwelcome tension awkwardly seeped into the room.

“I just-I, um…” Steve tried to get out, “I would rather go to sleep now instead,” he finally said.

Rebuffed, Bucky fell back on his knees. His underwear still around his thighs, his hands landed on his lap.

Steve moved over to the side of the bed. His own erection still wanted some attention and made itself very known when he swung his legs off the edge. Rubbing a hand over his face, he turned back to look at Bucky.

He hadn’t moved. “Okay,” Bucky said, eyes down.

After a moment, when he wouldn’t look up, Steve knew he had to say something. “It’s not you. I promise.” Not an excuse, the complete truth.

Bucky’s eyebrows knit together. “I didn’t think it was me.”

It quickly dawned on Steve that this had upset Bucky in a way he should have predicted.

“What is it then?” Bucky asked.

“It’s not you,” Steve repeated.

“Sure. Of course.” At that, Bucky suddenly looked so defeated and it almost made Steve spill everything there.

Since the night they met, he’d been dipping around the truth. Knowing that was a shitty thing to do, he always planned to tell him. Just not in a scenario such as this, where it would look more like an excuse more than anything. As if he only wanted to try bandaging a wound and not communicate something maturely to his partner. Or worse imply that this was the only reason he wanted them to be together. Bucky deserved better than that. Steve opened his mouth to speak.

But Bucky beat him to it. “I’m, uh, gonna shower. I’m all gross,” he said and got up from the bed.

Steve didn’t respond and thankfully Bucky didn’t push for one. He finished gathering what he needed around the room and left. Steve turned over and eventually heard the water switch on. When Bucky returned, he pretended to be asleep to avoid saying anything else stupid.

He felt the mattress dip behind. A few moments later, something softly brushed over his cheek, fingers moving the stray, fallen strands of hair across his face. Bucky mumbled something under his breath before finally giving up, flicking off the light, and settling down on his side of the bed to sleep.

Steve could hear him, of course, with his super hearing. Assumedly Bucky had been counting on that when he said:

“ _I wish you would just talk to me… I’d work through anything for you, Steve, please know that_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep I forgot the cat again.
> 
> A little angst and my attempt at being awkward, don't worry the next chapter is just gonna jump right into it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is like a week or so late from when I've usually been uploading chapters so I'm just gonna leave it at basically 11k words... admittedly this chapter reveals the whole reason for me writing this fic in the first place.... I think.
> 
> I honestly don’t know why I’m writing this fic, but I’m having a whale of a time.
> 
> [Mild Trigger Warning: even though nothing actually happens I still want to place a warning on this chapter, I've put more about it in the end notes of this chapter.]

The Avengers Tower lobby buzzed chaotically with men, women, and people in suits, moving or leaving swiftly from one section of the building to another. The afternoon sunlight poured down from the glass ceiling and danced in rainbow patterns on the tiled floor.

Bucky caught bits and pieces of conversation as he hid under his hat and checked over Steve’s text message again.

The screen stared back at him blankly. Nothing new but Steve’s last message, _see you at 3pm :)_.

The time said _3:52_.

Bucky glanced around the lobby space, searching thoroughly. After coming up short once more, he was so tempted to text Steve if he wanted to meet up some time later somewhere else. They didn’t usually text twice when meeting up.

But Steve had never been this late before.

This was just be meant to a rendezvous point. Originally, he’d been stood outside. After Steve took so long, he moved inside to search him out here, but stayed for the good air conditioning. The longer he took inside, the deeper this itch crept down his spine.

Last night, he’d told Steve he needed a break from this part of his life. Steve wanted to take him out for lunch, so they couldn’t meet back at the final destination of Bucky’s flat.

An announcement came over the tannoy, making Bucky jump. A group of suits sat in square, uncomfortable looking chairs all got up and chattered away amongst each other as they made their way off into the building.

Bucky got a handle on his stupid heartrate and ducked his head. He wanted to leave and didn’t want to. They really needed to talk about last night. But he couldn’t deny that he was apprehensive to have that conversation.

What if he didn’t like what Steve had to say and it had the chance to end things? And yet he couldn’t leave what happened between them until it all came up another time.

Bucky still wanted to spend the rest of the day with Steve. After everything that happened with Tony in Avengers tower, he’d made Bucky feel so good again. A soft, fluttery feeling rumbled around inside his chest at the thought of it. If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up falling very much in love with this man.

Maybe that wasn’t so bad an idea.

Bucky decided then, he would wait another half an hour and, after that, throw a text his way. Time had all the responsibility now.

“Bucky?”

Abruptly a voice came from behind him, piercing through the ambient noise of the lobby.

Bucky spun around to find Sam Wilson, The Falcon, approaching him. He wore a simple shirt and leather jacket, sunglasses propped up on his head.

“Hey, man,” Sam said, “I thought that was you. You waiting for Steve, presumably?”

Bucky wondered how he would feel seeing him again. Being honest, it wasn’t as worse as he’d thought. “Yeah, why else would I be here?” he said, without any menace behind it.

Agreeing, Sam gestured over his shoulder towards a man and woman leaning up against a wall, both of who were blonde and white. “You can come wait with us?”

Bucky paused.

The night before, he didn’t think he would be ready to get involved in this side of Steve’s life so soon, especially not on the exact day after Tony Stark personally threw him out.

Maybe because it was just Sam. The guy had a natural air of trustworthiness and calm about him. In a way, even more than what he got from Steve.

“You sure?”

Sam didn’t stutter. “Wouldn’t have offered otherwise.” He walked up closer and guided Bucky with an open arm. “Come on, we’re also waiting on him and Tash. And, no harm meant, but you look like a guy tryna avoid a sniper. It’s spooking out security.”

Bucky bailed and followed Sam back to the other two at the wall, feeling sheepish.

“Was it him then?” the man asked on their approach.

“Nah, not even close,” Sam said, not blinking, and they shared a smile. He gestured his hand to the two. “Bucky, this is Clint and Sharon.”

Bucky cleared his throat. “Good to meet you,” he said.

Clint raised his hand in greeting. Bucky couldn’t help noticing that he looked right at him and Sam when they spoke. It took Bucky a moment to spot the bulky plastic wrapped around his ear was a hearing aid.

Sharon reached out her own to shake.

The painful memory from shaking Natasha’s had Bucky hesitating.

Thankfully, she did not follow the same and gave him only a brief squeeze. “It’s nice to finally put a name to a face,” she said. “Steve has been more than a little love sick about you for quite some time now.”

Bucky felt like he’d been hit by a train. He hadn’t expected her to reveal something that. He knew Steve really liked him, but Steve just didn’t seem like the guy to go blabbering to his friends about a partner. What could he even possibly tell them about Bucky that would sound interesting anyways, when they were all superheroes and he was just an ordinary man?

“Oh, sorry about that,” was all Bucky could think to say. An strong blush surely crept along his face.

“Don’t be!” Sharon said and she quickly became aware of the effect her words had. “I meant that he seems happy and, well, it can be an uphill battle to get him that way sometimes.”

“What do you mean?”

Sharon and Sam shared a side eye.

Bucky felt like he’d asked something he shouldn’t have. But Sharon had been the one to initiate the topic of her own accord. He went to take it back when Sam got in there first.

“I don’t know if it’s stress or the serum,” Sam said. He seemed to chew the words around in his mouth, “but he’s been _different_ these last few months, until he met you. Which is to say, I think you helped solve a problem he didn’t know he had.”

“Would this be, um, a problem worth worrying over?” Bucky asked tentatively.

“No, no,” Sam threw his hands up, “if it was something like that, I’m sure Steve would say.”

“We don’t mean this as anything against you,” Sharon added, decisive. “Quite the opposite actually, it’s just—it just appears good to have you around. And around him.”

“Okay,” Bucky said. He nodded slowly. “Thanks, I guess.”

Something told him that this wasn’t just about his relationship with Steve. Almost as if they wanted to double down on something about Bucky specifically, like the goodness of his presence or to make him feel welcome, perhaps. Anything this would be, must have been because of the events of the previous night.

Beside Sharon, Clint blinked and abruptly shook his head, as if he’d only just realised the people around him were talking. “Wait, is this the guy who Tony threw out the Tower last night?” he said.

There it was.

Bucky felt his shoulders automatically retract. “Sounds like me,” he said.

Sam budged an elbow into Clint’s side. “Man, maybe you zip it for a second.”

Confused over what he’d done, Clint looked to him. “What?” he made a gesture towards Bucky as if holding up a platter, “he said it _was_ him. And Tony did throw someone out last night. Happy was telling me all about it over breakfast.”

Eyes wide, Sharon and Sam turned to Clint fully, very unhappy with what he’d said, and on the clear intention to chastise him some more.

Bucky spoke first. He wasn’t some delicate damsel. He could talk about this. This wasn’t his first rodeo and it happened to him, after all. “Tony isn’t here now, is he?” he said.

Clint regarded him with a sympathetic expression. “Nah, he flew out this morning,” he said. “In a plane, not his suit. Something like an investment collaboration thingy that required an in-person meeting, so he took the first flight out he could. He’s not heading to join Pepper though, that’s all I know.”

Sam folded his arms across his chest. “Hence why we’re all here to meet up and enjoy ourselves in the time he’s not here,” he said.

“Is he really that bad?” Bucky asked.

The three of them looked at each other. Obviously, none knew who should to comment first. Clint merely drew his shoulders up in a shrug and Sam shuffled about on his feet, considering his words.

“Tony is complicated,” Sharon said at last. “He can be such a nice guy, when he’s not being an inconvenient asshole. My great aunt was basically a secondary parent for him, you see. After her passing, he seemed to have hit a rough patch and thinks he can get away with using us a crutch for that.”

“Oh yeah, like how a few months back when my mom got kicked out by her landlord,” Sam said, coming in second, “as soon as Tony caught wind of it, he bought her her own house, up front with no intention of getting her to pay back. Now, my mom is not a charity-taking woman but then Tony insisted she was welcome to keep the house for as long as she needed until she found her own. Yet when I have a problem with him going alone into an unmarked area, we warned him would be armed to the teeth, then he lies to my face about the proper fixes done to my wings.” His eyes hardened at the memory, “he’s lucky I found out about it during training.”

“Tony is literally an absolute hypocrite,” Clint cut in, lastly. “I mean he throws you out,” gesturing to Bucky, “not knowing anything between you and Steve, only because he had the same thought to do that to Thor first.”

A frown appeared on Sharon’s face. “When?”

“At that big party event we had together like a month ago. Oh yeah you were back in England then. It was for some annual celebration thing. Tony hired a girl to _pretend_ to be interested in Thor. Except there, she eventually told Tony to keep the money and slept with him for free.”

“I thought the guy just walked her home,” Sam said.

“Yeah, to sex her. Why else would he do that?”

“I don’t know, man, to be polite. Thor ‘s polite …he can be a polite dude.”

“What about polite makes it sound like he wouldn’t fuck her?”

Bucky didn’t have much time to think on this as Sharon immediately nudged Clint “uh, fellas,” and pointed out towards the lobby.

There, Steve and Natasha were walking out into the main section.

When Bucky caught sight of him that fluttery, soft feeling in his chest returned at full force. He’d seen Steve just this morning. Yet it seemed like he was seeing him for the first time here.

A black and red duffle bag slung over her shoulder, Natasha managed to say something that made Steve laugh. He threw his head back in laughter, clutching at his chest, and Bucky’s breathing suddenly came in short.

Finishing his addition to the conversation, Steve glanced around the full breadth of the lobby and it took Bucky a second to realise Steve would be looking for him. Appearing genuinely disappointed when he didn’t find him. He brought up his phone, probably to message him next.

Before he could, Sam put his fingers in his mouth and proceeded to create a loud, tuneful whistle.

Steve and Natasha’s heads, and the heads of several others, darted their way. The whistle had been loud.

Steve’s gaze fell on Bucky within the group almost immediately and he smiled, soft and golden.

Bucky’s breathing struggled to come through all over again.

Together, Natasha and Steve both walked over to join the group.

“You’re over here,” Steve said, settling his hand on Bucky’s lower back.

Bucky’s body reacted without his control to lean into that warmth. He looked to Steve and received another smile.

Natasha weaved her way past Sam to stand between Clint and Sharon, stealing Clint’s hoodie from around his waist and slipping her hand into Sharon’s.

Now one layer short, Clint kicked himself up from off the wall. “Where’s the kid?”

“Her brother showed up and they, get this, went out for lunch,” Natasha said, slipping her arm into his jacket’s sleeve.

Clint frowned. “But what… we’re… we’re here to go out for food?”

“I know.”

“That’s fine,” Sharon said, stepping in. “We can just go with ourselves anyways.” It didn’t take long for her eyes to settle on Bucky and then move up quickly to Steve, next to him. “Steve, Bucky, will you be joining us?”

“Um, yeah, I— it’s up to you,” Steve rubbed the hand he had on his lower back up to Bucky’s shoulders. His eyebrows softened, reeling in his own hopes. He didn’t want to pressure him and would go with whatever Bucky wanted to do.

Bucky really thought about it for a moment, because the situation called for it. Without Tony around and no chance of him showing up again, with Steve offering him any chance he needed to step back, even if they had found out his work in a way that he would never be happy over… Bucky still found he wanted desperately to say yes. “Yeah, we can join them,” he said. “I don’t mind.”

Something bright and _good_ shone, out of control, in Steve’s eyes. A wild excitement. “Great,” he said, bringing it back in again. “That’s great. That’s–” _what I wanted_.

Steve really wanted Bucky to get on with his friends, for these two parts of his life to meld together, for Bucky to be apart of his life, and the reminder of that rushed through him like warm water. He found himself smiling too, he wanted this as well, and took the hand from his shoulders to interlock with his own.

“Where to?” Sam said.

Natasha shrugged. “The usual, obviously. Who knows who we’ll bump into?”

As a unit, they headed out of Avengers Tower. When the street narrowed, so did their party boundaries and they split into twos and threes.

Natasha and Clint at the front, Natasha looped her arm in Clint’s and Bucky was left thoroughly confused. Sam pulled his phone out to flick through and tap at the screen, using their legs to guide him.

Sharon stepped in beside Bucky, her eyes were set across on Steve, however. “So, I don’t wanna say it,” she said with no malice, “but you lied to me.”

Steve’s eyebrows quirked up in attention.

“Of all the things you mentioned, you didn’t tell me he would be such a looker.”

Bucky turned away, face red. Despite it, he felt the rush of embarrassment blossom within him. He almost laughed and leant against Steve some more.

These sorts of comments were so much easier to deal with from clients. There, they were strangers, it was all for show.

But with Steve’s friend, even if he knew it wasn’t for his benefit, that it was meant as a rib, he knew they were being truthful in a way more grounding than anything a lustful client could say.

Steve did laugh himself, short and golden. Other than that, he barely seemed effected. A dark twinkle in his eye combined with his little smirk, he was teasing. “You’ll find that’s exactly what I said.” His hand tightened in Bucky’s.

“He chose your ugly mug,” Sharon said, “naturally, I’m to assume he would be more down to your level.”

Steve dipped his head and shook it. “Well played, well played,” he said. “This your way of informing me, you’re in a good mood?”

“That obvious?”

“You usually insult me when you’re feeling happy.”

Sharon hesitated a moment and her smile slowly faded back down to a neutral expression. “Pegs had a good weekend. Almost like I had her back for a while.”

Steve’s shoulders slacked and his hand loosened slightly. “Wish I could have been there.”

Bucky picked up on the general essence of who they could be talking about. He had a very strong idea who it was. Steve spoke of her a few times in the past and he knew him well enough to see that she must have been someone important.

Of all the Howling Commando members, only two were still alive in this century. One, no longer lived in this country. And the other was, former Head of SHEILD, Peggy Carter. Whenever she was mentioned, Bucky always thought back to the girl in his history class, who became obsessed with her because they shared the same brunette curly hair. He enjoyed those lesson in his own since Agent Carter’s righteous authority and get-shit-done attitude reminded him of his oldest sister, Caroline.

They also looked a little alike as well.

He knew little about Peggy Carter. But of what he did, he saw most of that in Steve.

Bucky tried to comfort him however he could. Started by squeezing his hand right back, he leant closer to his shoulder, offered a reassuring expression when Steve noticed and glanced down.

“She’ll have other good days,” Sharon said, comforting as well with a quick smile. Like a dandelion, there one second, plucked out the next.

“I know,” Steve said and then much quieter, “…I know.”

“It’s happened before and it’ll happen again,” Sharon added, so sure. Her eyes moved onto suddenly Bucky. “Anyways, I’d like to talk more with you, Bucky?”

“Uh,” he blinked, adjusting to the abrupt attention on him, “go ahead.”

“Steve’s told me a lot but not everything.”

Bucky held his breath.

“So what is it you do for a living?” Sharon asked.

Of _fucking_ course.

She had to ask that question.

Sometimes Bucky wondered if the universe had it out for him and liked to sprinkle in moments like this as a nasty test. She had been there for their conversation about Tony kicking Bucky out, but he had wrongly assumed she knew the full picture. He really thought about a reasonable lie for a good second and then decided, fuck it. “Well, I am a sex worker,” he said, truthful.

“Oh?” was Sharon’s initial reaction.

She would have heard something down the grape vine of last night’s events. There was no point lying. And she came across genuine enough so Bucky decided to just tell her, proving this to be true when she continued.

“You do online stuff?” Sharon said next and, in all the world, Bucky didn’t know what to with that.

He hoped he didn’t appear angry or too shocked because he really wasn’t. Only surprised in the best kind of way; Steve’s friends were something else.

“I have a friend who works in cosplay,” Sharon said, justifying her question, “she posts the more saucy stuff on her _PaidFor_ and recently she’s gotten into some personalised videos. You do anything like that?”

Bucky practically had to force his mouth to speak words. “No,” he said. He felt Steve’s gaze on him from the side.

After a second, Steve stroked the thumb of his hand over the back of Bucky’s in silent support.

“I work for company where people come in and we have sex with them,” Bucky continued eventually.

He got Sharon with that one. “Like a …literal brothel?”

“In the more legal terms.”

“Those exist?” she said.

“We do our taxes like everyone else. By the book. I even have a mortgage with them. Not that that's gonna go anywhere...” Bucky nearly laughed.

Sharon shared the sentiment, unsurprising superheroes had terrible retirement benefits as well. “Hmm, cool,” she commented, offering only acceptance. She tilted her head, another smile graced her lips. “I don’t think Jessica – my friend – will have heard of that. Be interesting to see, though.”

“If she’s going independent…” Bucky said, his confidence fully fledged now, “I could give her a few tips and what, um, things to watch out for. We had a lot of training, where they bought up things I hadn’t even thought of.”

“Yes, that would be nice,” Sharon smiled anew. “Thanks, I think she’d really appreciate that.”

“Remind me to give you my number at some point.”

“And if you forget,” Steve chimed in, “I can always pass it over.”

The restaurant they arrived at appeared to serve chicken-based meals judging from the large depiction of a said animal on the sign. Although, Bucky didn’t recognise the name.

The waiter inside threw Clint a wide-eyed expression after he insisted on the circular booth in the corner, rather than one more suited to their party’s size.

Even Bucky was unsure if they could fit everyone in it by first glance. He might end up mostly in Steve’s lap to make enough room, with everyone else shoulder-to-shoulder. He wouldn’t exactly be desperate to complain, if that were the case.

Clint’s insistence became clear when the unit travelled deeper into the restaurant, forced into single file, and they passed by booth containing a boy with hastily-dyed silver hair and a girl in a red jacket, almost covered by her curly brown hair.

Bucky could have sworn he caught the boy scowling at them. The booth Clint chose ended up right next to theirs.

There wasn’t nearly enough room, leaving Sam and Clint pulling up spare chairs from other tables to sit in the open gap of the booth.

Once all seated, the boy then popped his head up over into their booth. He pointed to Bucky, “he is new.”

“Cap’s boyfriend,” Clint said.

Bucky swore he only blinked and suddenly the kid was right in front of him.

He must have gone fucking insane. But then the two dots connected in his head of an Avenger with superfast speed. Suddenly the silver hair made sense.

Quicksilver held out his hand and when Bucky took it, instead of shaking, he brought it up to his mouth to kiss the back. “My name is Pietro Maximoff,” he said in a clearly put-on deep voice. “There are many _many_ things for us to talk about – some things we also don’t want to know. _Ever_ … For now, all that matters is one piece of vital information that we need from you.”

An eruption of giggles came from the girl in the red jacket, now peeking out where he had been.

“Okay,” Bucky didn’t think this kid was being serious, leaving him thoroughly amused more than anything. Pietro had to be half his age and he didn’t know yet if this was genuine or another tease meant for Steve.

Judging from the continued giggles, it would be the latter.

“Are you able to cook, Mr Barnes?” Pietro said.

Sam immediately cracked a laugh, “oh ho ho, here we go.”

“Well, he promised, Sam, he promised he would never let you live it down,” Natasha said.

Pietro held steadfast, waiting for a response.

“I haven’t found anything yet that I can’t cook,” Bucky said and as the words left his mouth, Steve tensed up next to him.

Pietro kept a firm grip on his hand – Bucky even felt sure that it managed to slip free for a nanosecond, only to be snatched right up again. No pain, however, he managed to remain very gentle, despite his speed. “That is excellent news. You’d have no idea how tired we are of take out. If you are able to cook even one meal, without setting half the building on fire—”

“Hey!” Steve cut in, “it wasn’t half the building.”

“It was a real fire though,” Sam said. He looked to Bucky specifically, “real big and scary. We nearly thought someone might have died.”

“— _half the building_ ,” Pietro repeated with strong emphasis and the girl’s giggles bubbled over into full-on laughter, “then please know from this day forth it is your civil duty to accompany Cap by any means necessary to the fort—”

“Gotta let the refurbishments get finished first,” Clint added.

“—in fact, I’ll be imploring him personally to bring you along whenever he shows up.”

Bucky nodded, slow and precise. “I appreciate the offer, kid. I’ll have to think about it.”

“Please do think about saying yes,” Pietro kissed his hand again, then threw a wink in there, before finally letting it go and leaving Bucky somewhat bewildered in his wake. Was he meant to feel charmed?

“Thank you, Pietro,” Steve said through gritted teeth.

Pietro grinned, like that of a naughty school boy. In another blink of blue, the kid returned to his seat, giggling all the while.

The girl in the jacket waved Bucky’s way. “I also endorse his invitation. Anything to make Cap and Sam never ever cook again, pretty please.”

Bucky turned back to Steve. “Half the building, huh?” he said, flashing a smile.

Steve’s eyes narrowed, _don’t you start_. “We’re ordering the drinks now and not having this conversation.”

From across the table, Sam tapped Bucky’s arm. “We’ll tell you later. It’s quite the story.”

Steve opened his mouth to interject, when the waiter finally walked over to take their order. Once the orders were received, she left them to it.

Pietro refused to stay completely out of their meal. Despite having apparently received their food and finished it long before Bucky’s table even got theirs, he kept nipping back and forth into the conversation. He spoke the way he moved and Bucky struggled to keep up.

But everyone else at the table seemed accustomed, so maybe he could grow used to it.

His sister, Wanda kept to her own booth, only observing her brother’s behaviour and talking with Natasha and Sharon who were sat nearby. Every so often Bucky noticed something missing from his plate and he would look up to see her or Pietro eating it instead. Innocent expressions on their guilty faces.

Now everyone had been fairly acquainted with Bucky, he disappeared into the background of the conversation. He found himself joining in to their discussion quite easily. It turned out he had a lot in common with a bunch of superheroes.

At often points, Steve shared his meal with him, feeding him off his fork, and Natasha made a decidedly disgusted face at them, before doing the exact same with Sharon.

Long after the last dish was done, they stayed a while to keep talking, off-peek hours allowing them the luxury of a mostly empty restaurant.

Right up until Natasha’s phone beeped and she announced her and Sharon had to be leaving.

Filing out of the restaurant, they said their goodbyes.

Natasha and Sharon split off, tailed closely by Pietro and Wanda. Clint and Sam invited Bucky and Steve to join them on their night out but, thankfully Steve seemed to read Bucky’s mind and declined.

The sun only just disappearing under the solid frame of a nearby skyscraper, as everyone in the group finally parted ways.

Once fairly out ear shot, Steve pulled Bucky in close, a bright joy bleeding across his face, and said, “I know that can’t have been easy for you, after all of last night, but I’m really happy you gave it a try.”

Bucky couldn’t help smiling back, something about Steve’s joy was always contagious, and let himself be pulled into a kiss.

They passed an ice cream stand on the way to Bucky’s place and Steve handed over the notes needed, before Bucky could even get his wallet open.

To Bucky’s objections, Steve offered only his ice cream cone, along with a knowing little smile.

They went on sharing each other’s cones, while taking a detour home through the park. The sun had set, but Bucky’s smile kept on shining.

¬

Later on, Bucky came to him.

After they arrived back at Bucky’s flat and settled nicely into the evening, Bucky disappeared off to finish the washing up he’d meant to do that morning, refusing once again to let Steve help as he was the guest.

In the corner of Steve’s eye, he caught the motion of Bucky drying his hands on a t-towel. But he didn’t look over, wanted to give Bucky time to do this how he wanted.

Not soon after, Bucky joined him in the living room. He stood by the door for a second. Steve’s super-serum ears just about allowed him to hear the spike in Bucky’s heartrate and the slow breath he took.

He knew what this would be about before the words even left Bucky’s mouth.

“Steve, could we have a conversation about sex?”

Finally, Steve glanced up from his phone and tried a gentle smile. “Of course. I figured we probably should,” he said. “Is it gonna be a good conversation or a bad one?”

“I’m not sure,” Bucky bit his lip. “I wanted to clear something up before we… do any sex stuff again.”

Patting the spot next to him, Steve made some room on the sofa as Bucky sat down. He wanted to put an arm around him but wondered if that would be too much too early. He left it against the sofa back, in case the moment arose. “What is it?” he said.

“Well,” Bucky said, starting off and he took another deep breath, “when we have sex, I’ve noticed that… you don’t… not very often… you don’t let me finish you. I understand, more than anyone, the complexities of sex, and you don’t always have to _get_ somewhere to have a good time, which is why I ignored it the first time… and the second… and now the third. When you were so insistent last night, I think there’s something there and I want to know why.”

Steve felt like something swallowed his heart hole. The concerned look in Bucky’s wide eyes, the pinch of his brow, it had him regretting every second he’d remained quiet on this. “Oh, Buck,” he said. “It’s not what you think. I just sometimes… I prefer to watch you and not get involved.”

“You said it wasn’t me,” Bucky continued, determinedly stubborn, and he didn’t meet Steve’s eye. Steve couldn’t miss the strain in his voice, he was trying not to tear up. “But you can’t blame me in thinking that, when you insisted so strongly it wasn’t the case. I keep thinking back to our first night at work and how different that seemed from all the other times I’ve initiated sex in this relationship. And that’s another thing, it’s always been me being the one to initiate sex with you. I don’t want to put words in your mouth… but you can see how this looks for me.”

Steve could see how it looked.

From what Bucky had told him, it seemed in all his past relationships, his job had been the one thing to always get in the way. It painted the picture for him half the time. It would be a fair assumption for him to once again listen to it now. Steve could touch him, even when he paid the money for it, but now within the confines of a relationship, suddenly the commitment was too high. Bucky’s job made everything he did leftovers or second offerings, believing nothing he did would be enough to satisfy him.

None of that was true. And nothing in this entire conceivable universe could make it so.

“I really like you, Steve, and I’m willing to make this work but I can’t keep doing this charade—”

“Bucky, stop that thought process right now. You’re not—please believe me, it’s nothing to do with you,” Steve said, thankfully that got him to stop.

But, still, Bucky seemed to be expecting confrontation or for the other shoe to drop. He started to retreat away across on his side of the sofa. He looked like he wanted to run, in fact.

Steve’s fight or flight response took over. He worried if Bucky left now, he’d never get another chance to fix this.

Steve reached for him weakly, grabbing whatever he could get a hold of. He balled a fist into the sleeve of Bucky’s shirt and, to his surprise, Bucky didn’t fight him.

When he didn’t leave or flee but clung to Steve just as strongly, Steve tried to hug him against the sofa’s arm. But instead the movement was awkward and as soon as he leant his weight backwards, Bucky gently went with him.

He ended up with Bucky in his lap, feet no longer touching the ground. Steve clung to Bucky’s chest, head on his shoulder, desperate for him to stay just about long enough to explain things.

The pulse in Bucky’s neck returned to a slow, steady rhythm.

Steve pulled back and was met by an intense gaze. After Bucky made no attempt to get off him, he took his face in his hands. He kissed him, a brief press of lips.

It was time to sort this out for good.

“Listen,” Steve began, “when we met that night at your work, and then the blowjob you gave me on my first night sleeping round, are the first times I’ve gotten off in nearly over six months.”

Bucky’s face fell.

It felt like a tonne of weight lifted off Steve’s shoulders. He realised abruptly this was the first time he’d said that information out loud.

Shifting his weight, Bucky adjusted to a more comfortable position as he waited for him to continue.

Steve shrugged. He never really understood it all himself. He took a moment to collect his thoughts. “Something to do with the serum in my veins, maybe” he said. “Maybe, I don’t know. It’s given me a very high, uh, sexual… ‘threshold’, but done nothing to affect my libido. That’s the prevailing theory. That’s why I paid for a night with you – who would know sex better than a sex worker. I was completely out of ideas and going a little insane from not being about to come in over half a year.”

He noted Bucky’s grimace.

“I didn’t think anything would happen and that’s why I might have seemed a bit off that night. You’re a miracle worker, though, honest to god.” Taking Bucky’s hand off his shoulder, he kissed along the palm, enjoying the shiver that ran through Bucky’s whole body.

He dropped the hand and settled his arms firmly around Bucky’s waist to pull him closer. “I don’t know what it is you _do_ exactly,” Steve said, “just something about you… keeps me in the zone long enough to get there. But don’t get me wrong. Please, don’t think I’m with you just for that. You’re amazing in so many ways.” He couldn’t miss the hot contact of Bucky’s weight on his thighs. Slowly he snaked a hand down. Pretending to not be doing what he was doing, he began making small circles at the crease in Bucky’s thigh. “It’s just me, I’ve been trying for so long, I know my body and when it’s not going to comply. And, Buck, I wasn’t lying when I said I like to watch you.”

“Steve…”

He didn’t stop and didn’t stop circling his palm. “I guess I got a bit too grumpy about it last night. I’m sorry for that. I’m just sorry you got the wrong impression from all of this, really I am. I should have told you.”

Bucky regarded him, probably sorting through all he’d just heard. “That sounds like it fucking sucks,” he said, voice sympathetic. A smirk tugged at the corner of his lips. “Well, the solution is probably not for me to start calling you Daddy.”

Steve stopped his circling hand almost instantly.

That killed the mood for a solid second.

“Met a few clients like that?” he said, frowning.

“A lot,” Bucky nodded, brow raised. He laughed, open mouthed, and tapped Steve’s cheek. The hand remained there and Bucky stroked a thumb across his cheekbone. “Wasn’t the serum meant to enhance your body?”

“It has,” Steve said quickly. “But even I don’t know what it’s done. The rest of my life has been mostly trial and error. If it’s physical thing and blocked off some part of my nervous system or if it’s mental, I just need to keep up the mood or something… I don’t know… or it could be both. All I know is that when you touch me, it’s different.” Flowing into the scene again, he started grinding his palm again. “And then you gave me your number and I found out I loved talking to you. I think I wanted to show you, in my own way, that it doesn’t matter you’re apparently the only one in the whole world who can get me off, I want to be with you regardless …but neglected to tell you that _one thing_ , like a complete idiot. Can you forgive me?”

“Possibly,” Bucky said, wiggling in Steve’s lap and bringing his hands up to Steve’s shoulders. “I understand, Steve, but you’re right, you should have just talked to me.”

“I know and I’m sorry.”

“You said I wasn’t your first. Has anyone else ever be able to finish you?”

“There was one,” Steve said and he stopped once again. Memories of the war never failed to kill the mood, even the ones about Peggy. “During the war, I met the best woman. But we were busy fighting a war and I didn’t really care about it back then, not like I do now, didn’t have the time. Now I have all the time in the world and it just boiled up after the years out of the ice.”

“Have you told anyone about this? What did a doctor say?”

“Not much.” Steve shook his head. “Honestly, she had no idea what’s causing it.”

“And no one else knows?”

“I told Sam. And now you,” Steve replied. “Sam encouraged me to go to Doctor Cho. I wanted to keep it under wraps. I’ve barely had three appointments yet.”

“Have they… run any tests?” Making a face, Bucky looked off to the side, “how _would_ you even test for that?”

“I’ve barely done anything about this,” Steve said and that made Bucky suddenly turn on him. “Going to you was only because I was desperate at that point and completely out of ideas. But, mostly, I’ve been trying to ignore it.”

Bucky’s brow creased. “It doesn’t sound like it’s gonna go away on its own.”

“Well that’s what I can hope for. What? Don’t give me that look, Buck.” He couldn’t deal with Bucky looking at him like he was a top priority because he was starting to think he could actually believe him. He broke their gaze first. “I can’t exactly afford to be broken right now,” he said, mostly to reassure himself.

Bucky sagged downwards. “If you really believe that,” he said to his lap, “then you’re not fooling any of us—”

“Come on, this isn’t about that. I have—there are too many people counting on me.” Exhaling a breath, Steve recited the words he’d been repeating in his head like a mantra ever since this problem arose. “If I take too long slacking on my own problems, they’ll fall behind as well. I have to be impregnable.”

Bucky didn’t groan or argue like Sam had done, or call him an idiot and list the clear reasons why that wasn’t true, when he’d said those exact same words to him. Rather, he remained quiet.

Eventually Steve couldn’t deal with the silence and looked to Bucky, only to find his gaze still down at his lap. He sat there and waited for him to talk. He took his hand from out of Bucky’s crotch, assuming he might want to climb off him next.

Another moment passed by and the hands on his neck slide up to cup his face. Bucky drew Steve’s gaze back to him. “Steve, you know that’s not true,” he said with the softest voice. “Ultimately, the choice is yours. But know that I’m suggesting you, please, don’t ignore this. Sam clearly wanted to help you get better and I do as well.”

“It’s not a real problem. I just struggle to come, maybe it’ll go away… eventually.” Steve didn’t believe that in the slightest.

“Doesn’t matter. You’re getting help,” Bucky said, his tone sounded final.

Steve really didn’t want to argue. He already knew it was a losing battle. Nothing he could say would convince Bucky to forget about it now and stop. Finally, he decided on, “I’ll think about it.”

Bucky smiled, minutely. “When you’re finished, I’ll be here,” he said. He ran his tongue over his bottom lip, thinking. “Is there, um—is there anything else I need to know?”

“Oh, a _number_ of things. For starters, if you hadn’t noticed, I’m actually Captain America,” Steve said and the smile filled his face as he watched Bucky roll his eyes. “It just means I’m a _Special Agent_ for this _Secret Organisation_ , not that big a deal.”

“Of course not,” Bucky grinned at him. He cast his eyes down, letting the moment restart between them. Their argument hadn’t been solved, but he seemed willing to move on for the moment. “Steve,” he said, his voice velvety smooth, “would you like to try something now?”

Steve couldn’t miss the way Bucky had begun drawing his hips in small circles over his crotch, making up for the loss of his hand. He was more than happy to give Bucky exactly what he wanted. “Hmm, what did you have in mind?”

Bucky leaned in, almost close enough to touch. “Wait here,” he said, breath ghosting over Steve’s lips. He pulled away, climbed off him completely and walked around the sofa.

Steve, leaning after him, resisted the urge to follow. But he did as told and sat, waiting patiently in his spot.

Vaguely, off across the flat, he could hear Bucky rummaging around in his room, opening drawers and then his closet. He must have been picking up things, no obvious connection came to mind. He kept his sex toys in the lockable cupboard of his bedside table, so Alpine would find them by accident and Steve didn’t hear that open.

Speaking of which, the last time he’d seen that cat she had been wondering off to join Bucky in the kitchen. Quickly, he did a scan of the room for her.

Steve then heard Bucky’s soft approach and froze. Before he knew it, something was drawn over his eyes. He brought his hands up to investigate. Something thick and silky feeling, possibly a tie.

Bucky tipped his head forward a little to tie it up in a comfortable knot.

The back of the sofa dipped near the side of his head. “If you’re struggling to focus,” Bucky said right into his ear, “then you need to let me do all the work for you. Just sit here and relax.” He slid his hands, palms flat, down Steve’s chest. “Unfortunately, that means no watching, but no hands either, let me do everything while you only feel it.”

Just to be sure, Steve shoved his hands back behind into the small of his back.

Bucky pulled away and it sounded like he walked around to the front of the sofa.

Theory confirmed when legs brushed past his knees. “Can I talk?” Steve asked.

“As long as I like what you’re saying.” Bucky’s voice came from somewhere above him.

He began shuffling objects about around the room, switching off the long-forgotten TV. Sounds of the coffee table sliding along the floor. Something softly landed on the spot next to Steve, followed by another and then another. The clink of metal on metal, a belt buckle.

Bucky moved down to kneel before him and rubbed his hands gently up and down Steve’s thighs. “If it helps you stay focused, say whatever you want, especially if I do something you particularly like. Keep me updated on how everything I do is working.”

“Will do,” Steve said. Wetting his lips, the excitement swirled around in his chest.

Bucky pushed himself up and climbed back onto Steve’s lap, knees on either side of his thighs.

Slowly Steve became aware of a heat presence near his face and Bucky’s lips soon brushed his. Placing his hands placed on Steve’s shoulders, Bucky kissed Steve breathless. Then one hand snaked down its way down, letting him know its path, all the way to his crotch and began rubbing up against him. Bucky worked him until he was fully hard.

The blissful friction was not enough. Steve groaned and that got swallowed in another kiss, before Bucky pulled away and stepped off him again, leaving him with nothing but empty air for company.

Steve sat there, now fully hard and completely blind, waiting for what would come next. Something tickled over his thigh and he jumped a little. A finger slid along his chin and titled his head up.

“Steve,” this time Bucky’s voice came out serious, “for this to work, I want to keep you guessing,” the finger on Steve’s chin curled to the side, “I was thinking of trying something we haven’t done before. But I need to know beforehand if you’ll be okay with it.”

“I trust you,” Steve meant it so, “do whatever you think is right and only if I’m uncomfortable, will I speak up.”

Bucky remained quiet, the finger under Steve’s chin his only point of contact. It uncurled and stroked his chin, before Bucky bent forward to kiss Steve briefly, only a small peck this time. He thought he could feel Bucky’s smile, but that might have been wishful thinking.

Bucky’s finger went away with him and Steve was left with nothing again. In the silence of the Bucky’s living room, he waited.

The sound of a bottle clicking open came from above him. Bucky returned to the space between his thighs and kneeled down. He planted his hands down on the joints of Steve’s legs and manoeuvred them further apart. Flicking up his shirt, Bucky went for his belt buckle, undoing it and pulling his harden cock from his pants.

Steve nearly winced at the sudden exposure, only to feel it be immediately replaced with the wet heat of Bucky’s mouth. He cried out, gripping at the sofa behind his back. He fought the urge to reach out, to put his hand in Bucky’s hair and feel the softness there.

But to have this, required no hands.

Bucky bobbed up and down. And the sensation was magnified so much more than Steve expected from the lack of sight. His head fell back into the sofa cushion. Rocking his hips gently to get at the better slide of Bucky’s mouth and tongue, something familiar built up in his chest.

But he remembered what Bucky had said about trying something they’d never done before and that notion kept him at bay in anticipation.

Bucky groaned and it translated onto Steve’s dick. He bobbed back up slowly, sucking at the crown and tonguing over the slit. Steve flung his head to the side. Sliding all the way off, Bucky put forward a hand to jerk him off and Steve couldn’t miss the slippery, slightly cold slide of his palm.

Despite the predictability of what Bucky was doing, Steve couldn’t stop that feeling in his belly from growing stronger. It was honestly amazing how well Bucky’s touch could affect him. It almost felt like his problem had disappeared.

The last time it felt this easy and good, Steve had gotten locked in a safe house, trapped by snow storm with Peggy. Separated from the group and left alone with their rising feelings for one another, things led on into each other and they certainly had plenty of time to do something about it.

Bucky made a deciding noise and stopped the jerking, which bought Steve to attention.

Crinkling of something not quite plastic and small in size. Bucky bit down on it with his teeth. Something was torn open. Steve felt light touches at the top of his cock and then the unmistakeable slide of a condom down his shaft.

The presence of one reminded him of their first night, when Bucky put one on to fuck him and suddenly he had an inkling of what he planned to do.

“Bucky,” the name slipped from Steve’s lips unintentionally and Bucky froze on instant. “Uh,” tongue darted out to wet his lips, “that wasn’t… keep going, please.”

Bucky gave his thigh a light squeeze in agreement. He let go and stood up. Steve heard him turn around. Something small, but dense, got dropped on the sofa seat next to him, hitting the cushion.

Bucky climbed back onto to his lap, presumably backwards as he did it very carefully and with the support of upside-down hands. Hovering above, he reached behind to grip at Steve’s shaft. Very precisely, he guided his cock into between his cheeks.

Steve exhaled as inch by inch Bucky sunk down onto him. The friction burned so good. Once relatively buried, he lent back onto Steve flush against his clothed chest and began to rock off his hips back and forth.

All those years ago, when he and Peggy had sex in a boring-to-all-hell, wooden cabin next to a dwindling fire they needed to keep alive, they never really _fucked_ in the usual definition of the word. With no form of protection, both agreed it would be safer not to risk getting Peggy pregnant in the midst of a great war and that meant no penetration.

Steve hadn’t been with many other people since then, especially not enough to get that far in regards to sex. So, right now in the present, this feeling of his cock buried deep in Bucky’s ass, sliding back and forth, was definitely something never tried before.

Adjusted to the intrusion, Bucky experimented with different techniques to move on top of Steve. Switching between them at regular intervals, sometimes he would bend forward legs closed, giving a slow slide up and down. Sometimes he would brace his weight on Steve’s shoulder and bounce, hard and fast. Sometimes he would lie flush over Steve’s body, like how he started, and carefully, precisely rock his hips.

Every so often, Bucky got to the edge of Steve’s dick but never came completely off.

Steve could feel his mouth hanging open. He liked all of them. And he said as much each time the delicious rhythm changed. Ran his mouth until he didn’t understand the words coming out of it.

Bucky groaned along in encouragement, although never said a single word back. He was bouncing on his cock hard and fast when the buzz in Steve’s belly changed. It pulsated as if to tell him this time was _different_.

“Buck, can I— I think I’m almost there,” Steve said, speaking up, “but I want to see you.”

“Please...” Bucky’s voice came out strained and weak.

Retrieving his hands from behind his back, Steve ripped the blindfold off, only to be greeted by the sweet sight of Bucky’s bare shoulders, muscles straining from the tricky position. It didn’t take Steve long to discover he was completely naked. Clothes laid in a pile on the seat next to them. His hand darted up to Bucky’s head to position his mouth against his ear. “Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” Steve said through gritted teeth.

Bucky cried out his name. He let Steve take control, relaxing against him as he repositioned him so he could fuck into Bucky exactly how he wanted.

Steve snaked a hand forward around to Bucky’s front and wrapped it around Bucky’s cock. He whimpered, almost in surprise. Had he really expected Steve to allow Bucky use his body to get only one of them off, without dragging Bucky along the way with him?

“I never leave a man behind and I did say I love to watch you,” Steve said right into Bucky’s ear. “In fact,” he drew his lobe in between his teeth, sucking down, “I think it might be part of what gets me there.”

“Steve,” Bucky said, breath heavy, “I’m a lot closer than you think… I might come before you do.”

“And? Will that mean I have to stop?”

Bucky whined, twisting his hips around to buy time as Steve fucked up into him harder and faster. He brought his arm up and buried his hand into Steve’s hair, keep their heads connected. But, with the slow stroking up and down his cock and Steve’s rough thrusting from behind, it would be useless.

Bucky cried out his name and tensed. The only warning before he spilled over Steve’s hand in hot white stripes, painting creamy streaks up his stomach.

With that image in his head, Steve followed shortly after. The orgasm erupting from his body in golden ripples that had been built up specifically and perfectly from Bucky’s tireless work.

The man in question now collapsed on top of him, lucid and boneless. Steve moved his sticky hand around to tug across Bucky’s chest, hugging him close while they both took the minute to catch their breaths.

Bucky detached his own hand from Steve’s hair and laid it over top of it. Despite Steve’s protests at the mess, he interlaced their fingers. His head fell back onto Steve’s shoulder.

Steve nuzzled into the shorter hairs along the side of Bucky’s head and caressed his other hands up his side. Bucky made a small pleased noise.

The room filled with the sound of their panting.

“Amazing,” Steve said eventually.

Bucky chuckled at the declaration, open mouthed in that way that allowed Steve to admire his beautiful jawline.

“Seriously, you’re amazing, Buck,” Steve said, carrying on. “And not just because of what you just did, which was phenomenal. No, it just made me realise how amazing you are in general. Do you mind me calling you that, by the way?”

“What?”

“Buck. Instead of Bucky. I know you don’t like James.”

Bucky hummed. “James is what my family calls me, so it’s a little weird. But I don’t mind,” he said. He leaned his head back and to the side to meet Steve’s eye, as much as he could. “I would have said otherwise.”

“I know,” shrugging, Steve said, “but people have called me Steven on occasion and I’ve never had proper chances to call them out on it.”

“Yeah,” Bucky sounded off with a light smile.

Steve was still inside him. They sat like that for a long while, until Bucky was breathing at a normal pace again.

Steve couldn’t help but want to ask, “what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever be told to call someone?”

Bucky took a moment to think and shifted into a more comfortable position, as much as he could with a soft cock up his ass. “One guy asked me to refer to him _only as god_ ,” he said.

The sensation of someone moving around on his now-limp dick managed to subdue a laugh from Steve. “What—uh ah—as in capital-G god?”

“Yeah. It was quite difficult to take seriously, which is what he wanted,” Bucky said. “So I stopped talking after a bit. Then accidentally cursed in the heat of it, like _oh god_ , and luckily he thought it was for him.”

This time, Steve laughed and Bucky didn’t struggle to join him.

“We should clean up,” Steve then said. He took the opportunity to retrieve and inspect his dirty hand, resisting the urge to wipe it on something.

“Yeah.” Bucky breathed out. “Shower?”

“I think… I want to bath you,” Steve realised a moment later he could have that. “Can I?”

“Sure,” Bucky said and went to move, only to immediately wince. Without moving any further, he searched a hand down and back between their bodies.

Steve let out a little gasp as, “ah!” Bucky abruptly gripped the base of his limp cock, to keep the condom on, while he pulled off.

Tying it up, Bucky tossed it onto the coffee table.

Steve stood up behind him. The brisk air quickly reminding him of his exposure, he tucked himself back in his pants just as Bucky reached out for his clothes. He caught Bucky’s wrist half way, guided him up right, a question on his face.

Bucky regarded him with wide eyes. When Steve touched his shoulder, other hand going down low, it clicked together. He nodded.

Steve hoisted him up into his arms.

Wordlessly, Bucky wrapped himself around Steve’s shoulders, his spent cock nestled against his thighs. He rested his head in the crease of Steve’s neck and, as they moved across the room, twirled his loose ankles around in the free air.

Alpine made her appearance, came up to rub herself inconveniently against Steve’s calves. He tried his best to avoid stepping on her.

Steve carried Bucky, bridal style, to the bathroom, plopping him down gently on the closed toilet seat, and turned to switch on the tap.

The water spurted out violently and down the bath tub, where he plugged the hole. As the water warmed, he used the opportunity to clean up his hands.

“Als, no— could you not— yes, of course, right now is the perfect to sit in my naked ass lap.”

Steve turned his head back to see Alpine now attempting to kneed her paws on the bare skin of Bucky’s thighs. He squirmed in discomfort but didn’t dare push her off.

Smiling, Steve returned to test the water again, before straightening up to strip. He removed his shirt in one smooth motion. He felt hands on his waist and, after lovingly extracting himself from a lap full of white fur, Bucky helped him out of his jeans.

When the water was done, Steve instructed Bucky to get in first and kneel close by, while he carefully and purposefully sponged the mess off his stomach. It was his mess, after all. Bucky watched the movements with a silent smile.

Alpine observed from her spot that Steve wasn’t trying to drown Bucky and then hopped down to disappear off into the rest of the apartment.

Once done, Steve then climbed in himself, right behind Bucky. Settling with his back against the tub.

Without a word, Bucky leant back in between his spread legs and sighed as the hot water lapped up around them.

Steve grabbed the sponge trying to make a break for it and continued his cleaning of Bucky. But not really cleaning in the sense of the word, more like absentmindedly running the sponge across Bucky’s skin in gentle circles. He resumed his slow motions up Bucky’s chest, delicate across his nipples, but still noticed the way Bucky twitched at the tickle. He started on one arm all the way up to the shoulder. Unable to stop himself, he kissed a trail up the exposed expanse of skin at Bucky’s nape, up into the hairline.

Bucky hummed from deep within his chest, leaning back his full weight against Steve’s frame. “You know, I should make you come more often, if you’re always this affectionate afterwards.”

“No, this isn’t from that,” Steve said, completely truthful, not fighting the charm coming through in his voice, “not at all. This is just you.”

Bucky went tense for a second.

Steve’s stomach dropped. In an instant, he worried he had done something wrong. Maybe it wasn’t what he’d said. Maybe. Maybe he touched him in the wrong place while he continued to caress the sponge further up Bucky’s arm. Barely touching the skin and hovering above, when it reached his shoulder.

“Steve,” Bucky said, voice almost a whisper. If they had been in any other room, he might not have heard him, “how did I get so lucky with you?”

Steve didn’t respond. He didn’t know _how_ to respond. Obviously, the wounds of their night at the tower remained fresh. If Bucky still needed reassurance that was what he would give him.

On the contrary, Steve would say it was the opposite.

This side of the century, he had a number of great friends who all saw past the red, white, and blue suit. Some more than others. Yet in his 4 years out of the ice, he still struggled from date to date, never really settling for long before something about the star-spangled man reared its ugly head into the situation.

Until Bucky. This was the nearly the longest he’d been with anyone.

Steve never got the chance before the serum, too busy focusing on maintaining a steady income or caring for his sick mother or joining the war effort. Sure, he and Peggy certainly talked about what they meant to each other, what they wanted after the war. But that was just that, the war always came between them. Duty always came first. His heart still ached for the lost opportunity, if he’d have known how little time they had, he would have been more selfish.

Now in the present, Steve gave up thinking he ever would make a romantic connection with someone.

And that didn’t matter to him much, after a while. He had great friends who loved him and that he loved back. His work with the Avengers, and under Nick Fury, kept him busy enough. Gradually, he gave up all over again and again left life choices like that to the far distant future. Maybe when he finally retired in the decades to come, he might have been lucky enough to find someone then.

Bucky made him want impossible things.

In the silence that followed, Bucky had shifted forward in the water to turn and look him in the eyes.

Before he could get a damning word in edgeways, Steve spoke. “It goes without saying, I find you fucking amazing, Buck.”

Bucky’s brow creased and he ducked his head, always desperate to get away from Steve’s good words on him.

“I mean you practically made my problem disappear. Probably helped that was the first time trying something like that… but you made it feel so good for me.”

“The first?” All the colour left Bucky’s face. “Steve, wait you mean… why didn’t you say anything—”

“I—wait, don’t say it like that, hey, hey.”

“—if I’d have known, I would have never done that, I swear…”

Steve placed a wet hand on Bucky’s shoulder and he fell silent. “ _I_ really enjoyed it. Any time you want to do that again, feel free to let me know.”

Bucky’s gaze slowly drifted from Steve’s face to the water. The thoughts in his head played out across his face and, if Steve wasn’t mistaken, he looked scared. He didn’t speak.

Steve felt the panic in himself. He needed to get this out in the open. “Buck, you said it yourself, if anyone should understand the complexities of sex, it’s you.”

“This isn’t about sex, Steve,” Bucky said, voice unexpectedly stern. “It’s about _you_.”

“What do you mean?”

“Forgive me, you said …you’d been with a woman and I’m gay, so I assumed that you two had…”

“Fucked?” Steve offered and when Bucky nodded, he responded with a soft shake of the head, “forms of sexual protection weren’t exactly army issue, back then, so we played it safe just to be sure. Peggy could not afford to get pregnant.”

“And you’ve never got a chance to try it?”

Steve gave another head shake.

Bucky drew his legs up, trying and failing to fit in sideways within the tub. Eventually he gave up and repositioned to straight onto his knees. Kneeling before him in the bath water, he met Steve’s eye. “I think before we do _any_ thing like that again,” he said. “We have a lengthy talk about what you’d like and what you’d never want me to do. I hate the idea of going into something like that blind and… maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but that was me assuming you’d fucked someone before… I didn’t fully tie you up so you always had the chance to stop me… If you had told me you’d never done penetration, then I swear I never would have…”

“Buck, wait.” Steve hated that he kept interrupting him, they needed to have this talk. But parts of Bucky’s thought process were only just becoming clear to him. “Do you, uh—help me understand something here.”

Bucky nodded. His body shrunk inwardly on himself, sat back on his knees. Despite them being in the same predicament and Steve being the one with his legs spread, Bucky appeared so vulnerable while nude in the bath water.

“Are you worried,” Steve continued, “you may have… breached some part of my consent by us trying something that I’d never done before in the specific way we fucked? With the blind fold, so I had little idea in what you’d do next?”

“Have I?”

“No,” Steve said, plain and true.

Bucky let out some tension from his shoulders. The fear in his expression dwindled, somewhat.

Steve sat up right. “Bucky, I want to make this clear,” and he waited until Bucky looked to him, “I consented to sex with you. All of it, okay? I fully trusted you and nothing you did made that trust go away. I, sorta, worked out what you were planning at the time—from the condom and how you put one on to fuck me on our first night—but once I did, I still wanted it and didn’t want to stop you. Are you—is what I’m getting at here… is that you’re… uncomfortable with the fact that we did something without prior knowledge, it would be my first time penetrating someone?”

“A little, yeah,” Bucky said. He dropped his head. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be.” Steve touched his arm, pulling at the rest of him. “Please don’t be. You’re not—just talk to me, instead. Tell me, what are you feeling?”

What little resistance Bucky had, disappeared as he let himself be drawn back against Steve’s chest. While making sure he didn’t sit on and squash Steve’s dick, he shifted around to face forward again, sat back into him.

Once the water settled, Bucky’s voice came out clear, yet ever so soft. “Knowing you figured out what I was planning… makes me feel better. But, Steve, I don’t want to ever do something like that again, where you… where we’re not on equal footing first, especially not for a first. We need to have clear boundaries set, so I don’t hurt you or pressure you into anything that you wouldn’t enjoy.”

Steve’s heart cracked. Did Bucky really think he’d done that? He had him here now in his arms and he could prove him so wrong. “That’s okay,” he said, completely agreeing. “And the same for you… although you probably don’t have anything that—I don’t want to presume, but you can, uh, understand why I would think… that.”

“I do,” Bucky said. “There _are_ a few things I’ve still never tried.”

It was surprising, but not in the way Bucky might be thinking. And Steve scolded himself for assuming Bucky wouldn’t have saved certain stuff for his personal life.

Bucky’s head shifted across to where Steve’s hand rested on the tub edge. After a second, he took it in his own. “I think I would like to try them with you.”

“But first,” Steve said, “we’ll talk about it.” He interlaced his fingers with Bucky’s and bought their hands to Bucky’s stomach, bringing his other arm around to hug him close.

“Yeah,” Bucky breathed.

The water stilled enough around them for Steve to hear Alpine cleaning her fur in the corner of the room. She cast her blue eyes up across to them and blinked at him, leg in the air like a flagpole.

“We’re, uh, not pruning yet,” Bucky said gradually. It drew Steve’s attention back. “So we have to stay in the water for longer. I don’t, um, make the rules.”

Steve didn’t argue with him and hugged Bucky closer, kissing a trail up his neck. It had the desire effect as Bucky let out an involuntary moan.

When they finally left the bath, Steve wrapped Bucky in a towel, drying him off while he stood soaking wet himself on bathroom matt.

Afterwards, they settled into Bucky’s room for the evening, threw something on the TV, and ate reheated lasagne in bed. Bucky had cleaned the dishes but not made anything yet to eat, so leftovers it was. Regardless, Steve made a mental note to get Bucky to cook for him more often – ignoring Pietro’s voice in the back of his mind telling him he’d been right.

For as long as it took, they spoke about their sexual preferences, their past experience, what they wanted to try, and what they wanted the other to never do. Steve kept track of the tension and worry working its way through Bucky’s body and didn’t stop reassuring him until it faded out entirely.

When it got dark enough and Bucky started to yawn too frequently, Steve scooped him up in his arms and the two men laid there, Steve spooning from behind, as sleep slowly stole them both from the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Trigger warning for some folks: no actual dub-con but there’s discussion of consent that some might find uncomfortable, so please read carefully: Bucky blindfolds Steve and they have sex, but afterwards Bucky finds out that it was Steve’s first time penetrating someone else and he briefly worries he’s breached Steve’s consent because they didn’t discuss it before hand. Steve explains that he worked out what Bucky wanted to do, he trusted him the whole time and was perfectly able to stop him if he wanted, meaning he didn't stop him because he didn't want to.]
> 
> Me: says that I won’t put smut in every chapter directly there in the tags so everyone can see it when they open this fic  
> Also me: *has 3 consecutive chapters with smut in them*
> 
> I bought a new comic and it was absolute pretentious trash, so I wrote an extra bit to include Clint in this fic because he and Bucky would totally get on, so that's why it took twice as long to get out
> 
> We go back in time for the next chapter and it might take just as long for me to get it out cos it's barely written, oops (also I suck :D)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i got a little distracted by my other fic but i'm back here for a while
> 
> this fic has more subscriptions than kudos so i'm a little confused, but the read from you is appreciated, nonetheless
> 
> [suicidal thoughts warning: bucky gets a little low in his thinking but it's only one line]

_2012_

“Jimmy!”

Bucky tried to ignore his sister just a moment longer to finish the current sentence he was working on.

“Jimmy. Look at this,” Becca said, now choosing to nudge at his elbow in the obvious hopes of knocking it off the table so maybe then he’d listen to her. “Have you seen this? Look.”

Sentence abandoned, Bucky followed her finger. She was pointing at the TV. The one their grandma still kept in the kitchen on the counter.

“…what the fuck?”

He had said that under his breath but, on cue, his grandma’s voice came from the other room. “James! No swearing under my roof!”

“Apologises, ma’am,” Bucky said with a mock-salute, despite the fact she wouldn’t see it.

“Don’t get smart with me, boy.”

“Surely I wouldn’t,” a cheeky grin fought its way onto Bucky’s face. He got a noticeable thump on the arm and turned back to his sister.

“Jimmy, are you watching it?” Becca said and he was, okay, he was, “and after you said he wasn’t real.”

“He isn’t …he shouldn’t be.”

“ _He’s like Santa, Becca_ ,” she continued mockingly, waving her arms about, “ _or the tooth fairy_! _He’s obviously not real!_ ”

“Well, clearly, I was fuc—fudging wrong,” Bucky said, correcting himself quickly to avoid another sniper-hearing detection from their grandma. He searched out the TV remote.

 _“No science could make any man that handsome_!” Becca struggled through her laughter, “ _it’s not possible, what did his dong get big too—ugh!”_

Bucky gave up on the search to instead start tackling his older sister onto the tiled kitchen floor. Followed shortly by their grandma making an appearance to break up the tickle fight.

“You’re grown adults, I swear to god,” their grandma remarked.

The quantum alignment essay on his laptop sat on the kitchen table, waiting patiently to be finished in the three hours left, and the reporter on the TV carried on her story, “ _the body - discovered to be Captain Steven Rogers, the war hero formerly known the Captain America, thought to be dead - has been found deep inside a glacier off the coast of Greenland. It has been estimated it will take approximately three to four months to safely revive him. He was found by agents of SHIELD. We have reached out to their board directors for comment at this time, but have yet to receive a response_ …….”

After the attack on New York, finding a serum-enhanced man in the ice made perfect sense.

_2013_

Bucky went on the trains a lot.

Travelling to and from work, and also when he needed to visit his parents or sisters. Often, they stayed underground in the dark, where Bucky kept his head downwards and disappeared into whatever music was playing on his headphones.

But sometimes they’d go aboveground.

Whenever that happened, Bucky gazed out at the city landscape. Then he would spot a window or a place in a building and imagine himself existing there, instead of on a train with a First on his resume and barely $200 in his bank account.

Instead of on a train, he was in a board meeting overlooking the details of the latest project to organise the proper funding. He was in a construction warehouse with large machinery all around, some 10 times his size, and oil under his nails. He was on a walk to get out for a bit on his day off, breathing in the crisp, cool air and watching a train go by. He was anywhere but right here.

Bucky went to college for four years to study microphysics. He graduated with a First Class Honours, to the surprise of no one; he put in the work.

But life never went the way anyone planned it.

Bucky knew this. He understood it every time he was told that he couldn’t will himself into his final work-related phase of life. It had to happen as it happened. He couldn’t control it.

Like it had for his course friend who also studied microphysics and ended up a 911 responder after their first year out. Or even his old roommate who seemed unphased by his future prospects and planned to make something of it when he decided to in the coming years.

Yet it really did nothing to curb Bucky’s frustration in the slightest. His unrelenting disappointment at spending four years of his life training on something, only now to be put out.

Left feeling like he’d gotten kicked off at the last station because the train refused to take him any further.

It got to the point he couldn’t linger on thoughts like this for long. Or else he delved into something dark, uncontained in his mind. A something that made him believe it would be beneficial to do something stupid.

Bucky came to a running stop in front of the beeping train doors. “Goddamnit,” he said as he watched them slide shut.

He’d missed the connecting train to his parents. So that left him with an extra 20 minutes on his journey, waiting for another one, on top of the next 45 minutes he’d then have to spend on that train.

Bucky didn’t really buy magazines too often, especially not on a whim from a random newsagent he’d never been in before. But reading did always help him to kill time. And he’d stuck to wondering around the station, instead of waiting at the platform, since it kept his thoughts busy.

Scanning the aisle, nothing in particular caught his eye.

Except one.

A bright, red rimmed issue of _TIME_ magazine, titled _The HERO who SACRIFICED EVERYTHING_. A bold figure of a white man stood on the front cover, fully facing the camera. A stern expression on his face, he stared forward with a rather sad pair of eyes.

Bucky eyed him and almost felt like he was being stared at back.

It took him several more seconds of reading the subheading to realise who it even was. He didn’t usually recognise Captain America off the top of his head. Even then the red, white, blue uniform was the main give away.

Bucky lived nearly half a day away from all that superhero action. The Avengers were mostly found along the coast or out of the country anyways, these days.

The magazine cost Bucky $3.99 and he pulled it from his bag while sat at the edge of the platform.

This guy’s real name was Steven Rogers. He’d been born in Brooklyn, 1917, which still freaked Bucky out somewhat, the fact that he came from the past, frozen in time for years, and then had been thawed out in the present. It had been the biggest reason as to why Bucky didn’t believe he was a real person.

The interview itself came out a little awkward. And because it was in text form, Bucky struggled to work out if the interviewer, a Barbara Willos, only knew how to interview popular Hollywood actors or if Captain Rogers was the one being awkward. They didn’t mix well and it was clear Rogers had misunderstood a lot of the questions in the first half. Each paragraph opened with a question but his answers sounded like something half way through a conversation.

Bucky got the impression the interviewer must have expected Captain Rogers to be this arrogant and overzealous war hero who only cared about his great achievements and bountiful looks. But, rather instead, Willos got left with a calm, humble man that answered her questions to the best of his ability at the time.

The awkwardness started to mellow out towards the end, however. Just in time, as they moved onto more heavier topics. Instead of asking about how Rogers coped with using his phone, modern transport, his dating prospects (the most awkward question of all), or knew how to work his oven, Willos asked him what he planned to do with himself now in the 21st century as he was no longer a soldier of the war in the past.

Bucky got so caught up, he almost missed his new train reading the answer. Rushing through the beeping doors, he was a mess that hurried to a seat by the window to immediately continue reading.

Willos put that Captain Rogers had answered: _honestly,_ _I don’t know. As you’ve pointed out, I’m still struggling to figure out everything this half of the century into some sort of conceivable sense. But once I do, I’m not too sure what’s out there for me. The war was tough but, you know, it did one thing: it never failed to give me a good sense of purpose, that was for sure. It had me feeling like I was heading somewhere. But now I’m here in a world that thankfully kept moving without me while I was gone, except it’s ended up leaving me feeling rather …put out. So we’ll have to see what the future holds. I plan on contributing what I can for SHIELD and such, but for anything else, I don’t really know._

Willos asked him: _do you feel this a bad thing or positive?_

Captain Rogers responded with: _I don’t know that either. I, honestly, couldn’t say. It’s up in the air at the moment._

Bucky reread that paragraph, that whole question, again and then read it again. If asked to pinpoint what emotion washed over him right there in that moment, he wouldn’t know where to begin describing it. He felt like he’d let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, maybe. Noticeable tension seeped off away from his chest and an unseen weight lifted from his shoulders.

He’d never met Captain Rogers, or any hero for that fact, and most likely never would. But it comforted him to know, miles away from each other in completely different worlds, they understood each other. That someone with so much purpose and responsibility could end up just as lost as Bucky was right now.

Bucky didn’t have the answers yet because there were none. And it was alright he needed more time than most around him to work everything out, because he wouldn’t be doing that alone.

Only after the train arrived at his stop and he stepped off, did Bucky finally notice he hadn’t glanced out the window not even once his whole journey here.

He left the train and found the escalator needed to get up to the surface. His dad waved at him from the other side of the ticket barrier and Bucky, for the first time in a while, smiled back.

_2016_

Bucky couldn’t predict the future. He couldn’t predict what it had in store for him until it happened. That was what everyone had been telling him, after all. This had plagued his mind and remained an uphill battle. It took him a few more years to realise it would never be over.

If he had to go back and pinpoint the exact turning point, he would say it started when a work friend invited him on his bachelor party (surprise, surprise!) to a strip club. Bucky had dreaded the idea at first.

The place didn’t really hold much entertainment for him, as to be expected for a gay man, and so he spent most of the time _talking_ to one of the women, who came up to offer a private dance. He didn’t catch her name. But surprising both of them, there appeared to be a lot they had in common within this lady’s job perimeters.

Bucky became reminded of his cam boy days. For a few months back in college, once introduced to the concept, he’d worked as one. It had helped him to maintain a few extra expenses outside of rent. And, more importantly, it had been fun.

Bucky would describe it to be exhilarating, in fact.

Usually he did the work for free via a live stream and worked off the tips, suggestions from the viewers on what he could do next to his body or set of toys. At the time, he thought there was no way this would last. He would get the money he needed and then stop.

Instead, Bucky stopped when he left college, simply because he no longer had the time outside of structured jobs. He’d always meant to come back to it, though.

It was convenient, for one. It allowed him to set his own work hours, instead of a schedule handed over by a boss. People went on there for odd kinks, so often he didn’t have to focus on being turned on and could work on perfecting his craft.

Along the way, Bucky met genuinely down to earth people and some people who just wanted to watch. If they found a way to sour something, the site had good tools and measures to go about blocking them.

In the end, the shame came from hiding it from his parents. He assumed that would be the driving force to make him stop in fear they would find out.

He never knew who was watching, what their intention was. But creeps and dangerous men didn’t just hang out on cam sites. They went to out to shop and went to see movies, any worker could come across them, not just online sex workers. As long as they didn’t get him involved in their business, Bucky realised eventually there wouldn’t be much he could do about them.

So, back in the club, at the offer of being able to work in that environment again, Bucky took a chance. He went for an interview. For a job at a building where they did in person what he’d done online. He’d only planned to be backstage, moving things around unseen by clients and helping out. They offered him a different job.

Bucky’s mistake had been in thinking this would be the end of the line. This job had really been the start.

Then, a year and a half into the job, he met Steve.

Of all the emotions that ran through Bucky that night after Steve handed him back over his phone number for Steve’s instead, with Steve’s full name written down beside it, the main ones were shock and embarrassment.

It should have been more obvious.

 _I mean, come on, he didn't even use a fake name,_ Bucky thought.

He felt like someone who’d walked straight past a friend calling out his full name.

Why had he asked Steve to call him _Sergeant_?

Steve Rogers had been an interesting client. Good sex despite his apparent rush of nerves at the beginning. Hell, some of Bucky’s best wet dreams had even included Captain America. It wasn’t that uncommon to get a client, every so often, who wished to role play as him during their session. Or the other way around. Bucky found he made quite a fine Captain America.

For a moment there, Bucky worried he would be one of those self-righteous guys who think they’re somehow different from all the other guys that have fucked Bucky before him.

But Steve brought it around, wanted him to join in on the fun, and they connected in more ways than just physical.

That was why he’d felt the need to pass his number over. It wasn’t unheard of for clients to make a rebound appearance. But this was Bucky’s way of saying he’d like to meet again, without the heavy price tag looming over them.

Instead, Steve had rejected him, flipped it around, and left that decision to him.

Waiting for his bus home, his backside half gone numb from the bus shelter slab for a seat, Bucky sat there and wondered if it was worth texting Steve after all. The man might not even respond and that, he found, would be disappointing.

He would need a couple of days to properly think this through.

¬

Half way through a conversation with Becca, one about this new show they’d both started watching - Bucky and her were debating if Lucifer would reveal himself to Detective Decker in the next season or if that would be too early - when a cheery knock sounded at Bucky’s apartment door.

It stopped him in his tracks, and mid-sentence, because if someone knocked at his apartment door, they didn’t literally knock at his door. They rang the doorbell for his building complex.

Only one person ever physically knocked at his door. Only one person stubborn enough to sneak past the front desk and probably run up the stairs, forgoing the lift, to speak to him face-to-face first, rather than through a machine.

“You expecting someone?” Becca said to the back of Bucky’s head as he turned in the direction of the door.

Alpine was out. So it could still be a neighbour, come to complain that said cat had been scratching at their window or something.

“Uh… not really,” Bucky got up. “I’m pretty sure I know who it could be, though,” he said, making his way over to answer it.

But he swept the door open to find exactly who he expected behind it. The sight of him still made Bucky’s heartrate swoop.

Steve stood, dressed in a shirt and his usual jacket, accompanied by an invisible mist of pleasant aftershave. In his hand, he held a large bouquet of colourful flowers and had been checking them over before registering the door had opened. He never usually brought flowers. Glancing up briskly, he grinned at Bucky’s uncensored reaction.

Bucky’s heart swelled three sizes right then. “Steve…” he said, his voice didn’t sound like his own, “what are you doing here?”

“To meet your sister,” Steve said like that declaration should have been obvious.

It wasn’t.

Because when Bucky asked a few days earlier, whether Steve would like to spend the day with him and Becca, he’d apologised and said he had no way of making that date or time. Not like Bucky couldn’t easily spend the day with Becca on his own. But he’d wanted to introduce Steve to his family and finally start the process of blending two parts of his life together.

“She is here, right? I didn’t get the day wrong?” Steve searched around in the space behind Bucky.

“Yeah, she’s here,” Bucky said, watching the relief lift from Steve’s shoulders. “But you… you said you were busy.”

“Well I lied because I wanted to surprise you. I’m terrible liar, you know that.”

Bucky blinked. “That you are.”

“Can I come in?”

Already stepping to the side, “yeah,” Bucky said and led the way into the living room.

His sister was still sat on the sofa in the same spot and raised her brow after Bucky’s eyes landed on hers, able to guess who this was, as if to say _well looks like he could make it after all_.

“Hi,” Steve said from behind.

“Hey,” Becca said, putting down her drink so she could properly stand up and greet their unexpected guest.

Bucky gestured between them, “Becca, this _completely_ unanticipated person isn’t an intruder and is actually my boyfriend Steve. Steve, this is my sister Becca.” As they shook hands, he took the opportunity to clear out a space for Steve on the sofa and nab a drink for him from the kitchen. He didn’t need to ask which one he wanted.

“Unanticipated can still be warranted,” he heard Becca say, “pleased to finally meet you.”

“I feel the same,” Steve replied. “Bucky always has some story to tell about his family.”

“Oh really? That sounds like him. I can barely get this lovebug over here to stop talking about you, as of late, for more than few minutes.”

Now thankful for leaving the room, a fresh blush blossomed across Bucky’s cheeks. It was true. More noticeable since she’d pointed it out, he _had_ been slipping in a few titbits here and there into their conversations about Steve. He couldn’t help it.

Nothing about him being Captain America, of course. He didn’t want to outright lie to Becca, however. That wouldn’t work in the long wrong, he argued. So he jumped through a few loop holes in the system and stated that Steve was a special agent for the government – not entirely false – and therefore Becca should be discouraged from asking too much about it.

On his return to the living room, Bucky plopped a glass of lemonade on the coffee table before Steve and then pointed at what lay in his hand. “Flowers?”

Steve looked to them as if they’d only just appeared in his hands. “Not for you,” he stated after a second and held them out towards Becca. “These are for you. Bucky said you had a liking for tulips, thought they might help me make a good impression.”

“Tsst, like you need that,” Becca said, hand to her chest. “But yes, please,” and eagerly took the bouquet from him, shifting the flowers to see all the colours.

That was what the bouquet was for. Bucky never would have recognised them, if Steve hadn’t said the name. Remembering his sisters favourite flowers was enough when he lived in the city and the only areas he saw flowers in would at a stool or at the park. He easily forgot what they looked like, like recognising a character in a show she watched, but he’d never seen.

“Oh they’re lovely,” Becca said. She delicately brushed a finger along the soft petals. “Jimmy,” she turned to face Bucky, “do you have a vase to spare? So they don’t die before I go home tomorrow.”

“Uh, I might do.” Bucky started towards the cupboard in the corridor, thinking. He kept all his little odd bits and ends in there. He could still see into the living room.

So didn’t miss when Steve said, after a long second, “Jimmy..?”

Bucky froze, search momentarily forgotten. He turned his head slightly to tune in on their voices.

Becca’s eyes went wide and so did her smile. “He hasn’t told you that one yet?”

“I just assumed you called him James,” Steve said, honest. He lowered his voice but Bucky still managed to hear him say, “does anyone call him by his full name?”

“Not for a lack of trying,” Bucky called after them, rolling his eyes at their silence and then shared giggling.

“Grandma does,” Becca answered.

Sighing and shaking his head, Bucky only found a bucket. But it would have to do. Filling it with a little water, he returned and as predicted Becca shot him a look.

“That’s a bucket, Jimmy! It won’t work,” she said.

“Well it’s gonna have to,” Bucky said and, after plonking the bucket on his coffee table, snatched the bouquet.

Steve had taken his drink and stood sipping it, with a slightly more supportive expression on his face.

Bucky undid the ribbon tying them all together, which in hindsight might have been his main downfall, and peeled away the layers of paper, plastic sheets.

As if to purposefully fight against him, the flowers tumbled outwards wildly along the rim of the bucket, some even drooping over the side like Alpine scrambling to get out of the tub. Bucky had to struggle for good minute to stop them from falling away.

Neither Becca or Steve chose to hide their amusement and Bucky allowed it because at least it counted as a bonding experience.

With a huff, he gave up. “Okay, why don’t we go out and buy a vase then?” Bucky said, defeated.

That managed to ease the laughter and Becca went to grab her jacket.

¬

They ate out.

Bucky bought an apparently sized vase from a thrift store and they stopped at a cafe along the way.

As the day stretched on, Steve slowly discovered a different side to Bucky. Around his sister, it turned out he could be considerately cheeky. He was cheeky with Steve, but Becca had deeper experience in the matter. She drew out jokes and laughter from him with a mere side glance and it seemed like they often already knew what the other was thinking before one of them said something. They did a lot to make the other smile.

Steve didn’t feel left out, however. Becca worked as a personal shopping assistant in Indiana. In her spare time she had plans to travel abroad and work as a translator in Germany. Her eyebrows shot up when Steve didn’t ask her his next question in English and they exchanged a few basic lines to the back drop of Bucky eyeing them confusedly.

Steve hadn’t spoken German since the war. It felt nice to bring fresh context to a skill, he’d somewhat neglected for a while.

They got back to Bucky’s flat in a couple hours of being out. Bucky rushed ahead to rescue the flowers and tend to a screaming Alpine, who’d been waiting for them, which left Steve and Becca alone in the hallway.

She toed one foot after the other out of her shoes. “So, know anything other than German?”

Steve answered without thinking. “French, Russian, Swiss, a little Italian, and some basic Japanese,” he said, abruptly tensing on the spot. It was a real testament to how relaxed he’d become around her.

He heard Becca’s surprised exhale, felt her gaze linger on him, “wow, any particular reason for all that or do you also have future plans to live in Europe?”

Steve racked his mind for a reasonable excuse. “I had lot of… friends as a kid, who all came from different backgrounds.”

Like most things in his life, he’d had to learn because of the war. Because the Howling Commandos had five native languages and another nine fluent ones between them and that excluded the extras Peggy could speak as well. Because when fights broke out between, they liked to keep insults in languages the others would be less likely to know, sometimes to keep it pleasant and sometimes to get away with calling them worse. In the end, someone had to resolve the situation and the serum made Steve’s mind into a linguistical sponge. It was easy to absorb common phrases and sentence structures in a matter of hours.

Morita and Dernier were easy to determine with Japanese and French, respectively. But Falsworth surprised them, a few months in, by revealing one side of his family resided in Switzerland and it turned Gabe had Italian cousins. Plus, with the amount of documents, secrets codes, and civilians they recovered that spoke or were written completely in Russian, it would have been possibly lethal not to learn it.

Dum Dum, on the other hand, had been the outlier and struggled the most to learn more than a few words in anything, even the different regional English. Maybe that was where he got him his name sake.

Steve couldn’t exactly tell her all this.

He stared at her, hoping she’d take his answer as it was.

Slowly, Becca nodded. Although, she didn’t hide her satisfaction, had the same furrow to her brow that Bucky got when Steve told him a lie.

Bucky returned then to save Steve’s reckless ass and invited them both into the front room.

Not long after, they ended up under the setting sun curling up on the sofa to watch a show.

Bucky between them, he lent into Steve and Becca let him stretch his legs out over her lap, appearing more content than Alpine when Bucky gave her some good stretches behind the ears.

Taking a leap from that book, Steve snaked his hand up to Bucky’s nape and started massaging small circles into the hair line. It didn’t take long for Bucky to breath out on the softer side of a satisfied whine and go lax against him.

At the nearing of the end of the fifth episode, Bucky’s breathing levelled out into deep shallow breaths. To be fair, the sun had gone down at this point.

Bucky’s mouth hung slightly ajar, from the angle he lay at, and his hair had become messy and wild from the static of Steve’s shirt and his unrelenting hand. That still worked now while Bucky slept.

One thing he did know, the serum counteracted most of the lactic acid in Steve’s body. And so he rarely got cramp, which meant it was easy of him to lose track of ministrations like this.

Natasha scolded him one time for nearly rubbing a sore into the sole of her foot, when he’d offered a foot rub on the flight back from a mission, while both were extremely sleep deprived. Zoning out, Steve lost track of time and just kept going and going on the same foot.

The memory of that now made him stop. Bucky surprised him with a small, sleepy moan in protest.

Steve regarded him for a second, allowed himself to really look over Bucky’s sleeping form without any particular hurry. The show continued on playing next to them, but he hadn’t really been paying enough attention to this last episode. It didn’t matter, neither had Bucky.

Becca kept watching, not noticing their attention had been drawn elsewhere.

The peaceful expression on Bucky’s face, the way he was hugging the other arm Steve had wrapped around him, the relaxed creases of his features, the sweet smell of sweat from his hair, he was so vulnerable like this and it stirred a wave of affection from within Steve.

After another minute, he reached out and gently nudged Becca’s shoulder.

She looked to him confused and he worried for an awkward moment, she would misunderstand.

Steve motioned towards Bucky and she leaned forward to see what he wanted. “Someone’s fallen asleep,” he said, mouthing around the words.

Becca smiled on a closed mouth and firmly shook her head. “He can never make through anything without nodding off. It’s a guarantee.”

With a quick glance at the time, Steve decided. “I’m gonna wake him up.”

Becca made no protest and even reached for the remote to pause the TV.

Shifting Bucky around into his arms, Steve lightly shook Bucky’s shoulders. “Sweetheart,” he cooed, “time to wake up. Come on.”

At first, nothing happened, then Bucky exhaled sharply and opened his eyes. “Wha…?”

As he awoke and regained his senses, Steve cradled Bucky close and it was strange. If questioned later, he would have said that time seemed to abruptly stop as their eyes locked, while the recognition worked its way through Bucky’s expression. He slowly realised who he was looking at and didn’t hold anything back in his sleepy state.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Steve smiled down at him. That wave of unbound affection returned and, in the moment, overcame him with new found strength. “Time for bed,” he said, sounding probably far too chipper than he normally would.

Bucky blinked again and started to sit up, stretching the sleep out of his shoulders and chest. “Oh, shit, sorry, did I fall asleep again?” he said, rubbing his eye with his knuckle.

Becca shot him an amused look. “The man says like he hasn’t done so every time he so much as thinks about watching a movie.”

“Still sorry, though,” Bucky said, sheepish, and stretched his arms and legs out before him. Once finished, he turned to his sister, “did you like the ending though?”

“We’ve left that for tomorrow,” Becca said, looking to the sofa. “Watching you dozing off has reminded me that I’m gonna be bunking it out on this thing tonight.” She started plumping up the pillows around her and arranging them at the top as a head rest.

“I can give you my bed,” Bucky offered and Steve fought back his protest at that.

“Oh, no, thank you,” Becca said thankfully, turning it down. “Your sofa ’s comfy enough, Jimmy. Anyways I doubt you and Steve,” she gestured between them, “would be able to fit on in this little a space. At least not comfortably.”

Bucky spun his head suddenly towards Steve, excitement in his eyes. Had he just expected Steve to go home, when he’d stayed the night for less? “You’re sleeping here?”

Steve shrugged “I got nothing tomorrow, I can if it works for you two.”

Bucky grinned, still sleepy around the edges. “I’d like that.”

“I’m fine with it,” Becca threw in there to seal the deal.

They let her have the bathroom first, while Steve and Bucky cleaned up the front room, spread out the extra blankets on the sofa, and set up the dishes in the kitchen for tomorrow. Bucky wanted to do it right then, but Steve argued against by hugging his waist and kissing his neck until his sister reappeared.

Becca gave Bucky a big hug upon her return, when she eyed their set up for her, noting that her little brother knew exactly how to care for his big sister. And that she’d had a great day out with them. Her train wasn’t too early so they still had time for something else in the morning.

Bucky shifted around and tried, as he might, to hide his flushed face.

Saying goodnight to Becca, Steve left them to it and went to finish his business in the bathroom. He used the spare toothbrush Bucky bought for him, after assuring himself Becca had brought her own, cleaned his teeth and used the loo.

When he emerged, the light in Bucky’s room peeked out from under the door, indicating he would be inside.

But something on the other side of the apartment hallway caught his eye.

Movement shifted in the dark and Steve fought to keep down his instincts and training to attack as Becca stepped out of the now-dark living room doorway and into the light coming from the bathroom.

A foot board creaked under her weight. She spoke in a hushed tone, like she didn’t want Bucky to hear from the other room. Or maybe to avoid startling Steve with what she said. “This is probably going to sound absurd if I’m wrong… but you’re _him_ , aren’t you?”

Steve said nothing.

“Before you go on the defence, I’m not tryna start anything,” Becca held her hands up. A smile on her face to prove this wasn’t a confrontation. “I promise. Jimmy told me you were some kind of… ‘ _government official_.’ That a lot of your job was ‘ _top secret_ ’ to keep me from asking too much. But the second I saw your face, I… I knew it was you. That you’re... _the_ Steve Rogers, you’re Captain America.” It seemed to properly hit her now she’d said it out loud. “You didn’t exactly use a different name.”

“Yeah, you got a point there,” Steve said, nodding.

Becca reaffirmed herself and took another step forward, still worried Bucky might hear. “I love him, a lot. We all do. But the rest of my family will be no different, they will recognise you as well.”

Steve’s stomach dropped. She was right.

“If you have to keep it under wraps to protect Jimmy, that’s fine. I can explain that to them, do what I can to keep him safe and, more importantly, happy. But I’m just saying they’ll have to know, there’s no way around it. Even with a different name.”

“I know,” Steve admitted and hung his head. This all of a sudden had become gravely complicated.

“Do you...” Becca trailed off. He sensed from the look in her eye, she wanted to ask if he _loved_ Bucky.

Honestly, Steve didn’t have an answer for that yet and was grateful she quietly got the message.

Becca changed her approach, “is it serious?” she said instead, “I don’t mean in a _if you break his heart_ kinda way. Jimmy is a grown adult. He knows what he’s doing. He can take a little heart ache if it came to that.” Pausing, they both knew what she was going to say next. “It’s more that… well, there’s just an undeniable chance, you could be putting him in serious danger one day, and if you’re only fooling around... I want you to tell me that your relationship with my brother will be worth the risk.”

Steve faced her square on. “All I want is to keep him out of harm’s way,” he said.

Becca visibly relaxed. She nodded and then nodded again. “That’s good.” She glanced at Bucky’s bedroom door.

No shadows at the bottom, if he was listening, it wasn’t while up against the frame.

“I can see he cares about you a lot,” Becca said, “Jimmy ’s only had a handful of boyfriends that have gotten far enough to meet the family, but even now… already I can see he’s so care free with you. It’s different. In a good way.”

“Bucky is important to me,” Steve stated, undeniably true. And even that was enough to soothe more of her anxiety that their current conversation had generated. “I understand what a relationship with me could mean and I plan to never intentionally undervalue that.”

Becca smiled, seemingly satisfied. “Thank you. I just want him happy and safe.”

“Me too.”

They shared another good night and he watched her upper half disappear back into the black of the living room, a closed door coming into place behind her.

Steve stayed in the newfound silence, glued to the spot for a moment longer, half expecting something to explode or fall apart around him considering the built-up tension he felt. Unclenching and clenching his fists, he sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face.

He wanted to meet Bucky’s family and now was rather annoyed at himself for having not reviewed this side of their relationship sooner.

Being with him could put Bucky in serious danger. In a way, it might be unavoidable. They should have a talk about this. Or would that risk startling Bucky and bring something into this neither of them were prepared for, ruin things?

Without a word, Steve walked straight into Bucky’s room and shut the door.

Bucky sat on the side of the bed, already reading a book by the lamp light. Oblivious and lost in the pages, Steve knew he hadn’t heard a word or noticed a thing.

The affectionate feeling rose back up like plants in a pond, rooted down and strong, but malleable, simmering around just below the surface.

Steve lingered by the door too long. It prompted Bucky to glance up and ask, “you okay?”

“Becca, uh… worked who I am. She just confronted me about it.”

Bucky slumped. “Ah.”

Steve instantly regretted his wording.

He went to correct it when Bucky put the book down and shifted on the bed over to him. “How long has she…?” he said while moving.

“Since the second I walked through the door.”

“Oh shit. Wow…” Bucky considered this, knelt on the centre of his bed, “she didn’t struggle, at least, a little to work it out?”

Shaking his head, “didn’t seem to,” Steve said. “Apparently, she knew the second she saw my face. Plus, the fact I still went by Steve.”

“Oh damn.”

Tentatively Steve asked, “is this a problem?”

“Of course not,” Bucky said. “She wouldn’t have gone to you, if she thought it was. Seems she has a knack for these sorts of things. I mean that in the way, that she’s the one who first found out about my job. She then encouraged me to tell our parents, even though I really didn’t want to. I would’ve been happy to go my whole life hiding it from them. But honestly I’m glad she did. Because I got to tell them on my own terms, before they found out about it in other rather nastier ways.”

“That’s nice to hear,” Steve said, then another thought occurred to him. “It wasn’t… bad how she found out?”

Bucky pulled a face. “Not the worst,” he said, confirming with a tilt of the head. “One of her friends found my company courtesy photo online and sent it to her like ‘ _hey isn’t this your brother_?’”

“Oh okay. Wait—I understand the process. But, sorry, what was it her friend find, your _what_ photo?”

“Courtesy photo,” Bucky said and, with a second tilt of his head, a small smile spread across his lips. “It’s like a head shot, I guess. A photo they took of me for their website, when I was a newcomer. It’s a pretty good one, if I do say so myself. Nothing too far explicit, so she didn’t find like my nudes or anything to that effect.”

“Oh okay,” Steve said, repeating himself because his mind had heard about Bucky’s courtesy photo and completely ran off with it.

That answer happened to be enough for Bucky. He clambered off the bed and passed by him for the bathroom.

Left alone, Steve shook his head to clear his thoughts.

He spotted the pairs of boxers and slacks, Bucky had left out for him on the end of the bed. Stripping off, he changed into them. Hidden under the slacks turned out to be a shirt and he automatically thought to discard it, since nothing Bucky had could possibly fit him.

But the actual size of the thing made him hesitate. The shirt looked pretty huge. He checked the label to find it was a triple extra-large.

Steve had slipped it over his head as Bucky returned.

He stopped mid-step, eyes directly on Steve, shaking his head. “Of course, you make that work somehow.”

Steve looked down to his chest and it surprised him more that the shirt was actually too big for him. It still fit his shoulders quite snugly but hung flat down his chest and somehow had enough room to be baggy around his biceps. He ran a hand over the large, patchy logo of a cartoonish bull leaping from an open metal fence. “Where did it come from?” he asked.

“Found it in the back of my wardrobe. I think some aunt got it for my dad,” Bucky said, stopping by his wash basket in the corner to separate out his clothes. “When she went to some derby race in the south. It wasn’t meant to be so big, but that was the only size they’d got. I’m not surprised in it ended up in my wardrobe, though.”

Steve climbed into bed, observing him. After a moment, the past subject dying down, he asked as casually as he could. “Is it, um, still up on the site? Your courtesy photo?”

“Nah, they took it down last year,” Bucky said, pulling the covers back and climbing under. “So that means there’s no point bringing the website up now.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.” Steve honestly hadn’t thought of that option. A free, ever-expanding encyclopedia always there at the edges of his fingertips and yet it always evaded his planning process. He understood its uses more than anyone and every time it ended up at the back of his mind, a forethought.

In the silence that followed, he turned to find Bucky staring at him.

“I’m assuming based on that look, you want to see it? Don’t try to deny it,” When Steve did try to deny it and his mouth dropped open, Bucky smiled to himself. “They should have a few back copies still on the system somewhere,” he said. “I should still hand them out when a client requests it. I’ll see if I can nab a print when I’m next in.”

“Just say a client damaged theirs and you offered them a new one for free.”

“Yeah, that would work,” Bucky said without missing a beat. “You were a client once before.”

“Certainly not one now? No,” Steve said, reaching for him. His lips brushed against Bucky’s neck, close to the skin, but not enough to make contact. He breathed him in.

Bucky giggled but turned away with his body to switch off the bedside lamp. “Not while my sister is staying round.”

Steve settled his head on Bucky’s shoulder with a huff. “I wasn’t trying anything, I swear.”

Bucky regarded him, fighting a smile, as he slipped out of his grip and down onto the bed to lie down flat.

“Okay, maybe I was a little,” Steve said now he leaned over him, head shifted onto his arm, bent at the elbow. “Can you blame me though? Getting a handsome guy like you in bed.”

“Touché,” Bucky said, voice low and raspy, his eyes already closed.

Steve flicked off the last lamp, made sure to plug his phone on to charge and settled on his back next to Bucky, who lay with his back to him.

After a long minute, Bucky’s voice came out soft and very quiet. “Steve,” he said, a near whisper, “can you do that thing on the back of my neck again, the massage thing you did when we were watching the movie? I think… I think, it’s part in why I fell asleep. You’re really good with your hands.”

“I can think of a number of people who would disagree with you there,” Steve said, but he didn’t need to be told twice at an opportunity to cuddle Bucky, rolling onto his side and bringing his top hand up to Bucky’s nape. Gently, he caressed his fingers into the short hairs on the back of his neck. “Did you mean this?”

Bucky exhaled and let out a sleepy hum. “Oh, yes… Thanks.”

Steve smiled and continued the gesture with a kiss in Bucky’s hair. “Night, Buck.”

Bucky gave no response.

Steve immediately became concerned.

Surely, he couldn’t have gone under _that_ quickly? It had only been a couple of seconds.

Blinking in disbelief, Steve leaned over to find Bucky had, indeed, fallen asleep.

His eyes were shut and he breathed in and out in a slow, rhythmic pace.

The affectionate feeling overcame him once again and, this time, he embraced it fully, letting it wash through his body like warm honey. In a moment such as this, it could only mean one thing.

He was falling in love with him.

Bucky seemed to moan a little then, mumbling in his sleep, as if to agree with that conclusion.

Slipping his over arm under Bucky’s bulk to reel him, Steve shifted himself around enough to get comfortable and join him. His hand didn’t stop until sleep took him as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter will finally feature one of the two art works i got commissions a few months back :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by: **@inflomora_art** on Twitter

The door to the back room squeaked. It always did when pushed open. Anyone walking around in the staff areas could usually hear it, often from wherever they were.

So that made Bucky jumpy. He didn’t know exactly why he was jumpy. He wasn’t going to get in trouble, it wasn’t like what he planned to do could even be considered stealing.

It would be the stupidest way to steal something as well, since there was a camera up in the top corner and he’d have to log into the computer to print off what he wanted. Although the cameras only got reviewed in this place on a need-to-know basis. If he wasn’t too obvious now, he could very easily slip past unnoticed. Again, still not stealing.

Flicking the monitor on, Bucky rapidly tapped the spacebar. The computer got left on most of the time, so there would be no reason for it to be off now.

After a moment, the screen flicked to life and blinded him, seemingly, in response to being doubted.

Bucky normally never came back here and, if caught, his co-workers might get a little nosy, ask a few unwanted questions and stir up some gossip about his private life. He was just using the work computer to get a nice picture of his courtesy photo for his boyfriend. Nothing to see here. But he knew the girls would definitely talk if they saw him. Something he hadn’t minded in the past when his boyfriends were not public figures.

It had him giddy in anticipation, though, just thinking about all this. Over time he discovered he needed to know Steve thought of his photo.

Now was the only chance he’d have. Steve had sent his _on the way_ message nearly half an hour ago and by the time Bucky finished cleaning up, got changed and clocked out, Steve would arrive.

Once logged on, locating where the photo might be was no problem, but finding his own became significantly harder after he discovered that none of the photos had been labelled, _ever_.

No wonder his boss, Claudia, always asked for these things to be ordered in advance.

Bucky grunted and started the patient process of scrolling through them all. His was going to be the last fucking one, he knew it.

His phone buzzing in his pocket almost jolted Bucky, he’d become that jumpy.

It was only Steve stating he’d gotten caught in traffic. It was coming up to rush hour. No inconvenience there on Bucky’s end; he needed this extra time.

And his patience gradually paid off as, third of the way down, a familiar face came into view.

It felt odd to seeing this again. He obviously remembered in a vague sense what the photo looked like, what his pose was, what he’d been wearing and the final result in the picture, but it still felt like he was seeing it for the first time with fresher eyes. It had been a while and he almost got self-conscious at the prospect of sharing it with someone he knew would react very positively.

Bucky right clicked on his photo and selected print, before worrying for a solid second whether or not the printer needed connecting to.

It answered that for him by spurting and chirping away in no time. A loading bar came up on the screen. At the last moment, he checked it had the correct paper inside.

Then Bucky left it to print and dry as needed, while he went to change out of his work clothes and grab his things from his locker. Shoving his jacket on, he slipped into his shoes and rushed back to the printer because shoes were banned in the back areas. Claudia hated dirty marks on her floor, but he only needed the picture and he would be out.

The door opened before he could get a hand on it and before he could stop in time, meaning Bucky nearly collided with the figure that stepped out.

Mia halted him with a solid hand on his arm. “Oh Bucky!” she announced, startled and stepping away.

He staggered back from her.

“I was about to come find you,” she said and he tensed, stomach dropping instantly. But Mia only wanted to inform him, “your photo is done!”

Bucky hurried to collect himself. She wasn’t trying to question him about this, he told himself. “Uh, thanks, Mia,” he said and moved to let her out of the way. “Yeah, I was coming back for it now.” They twirled around each other as he rushed inside to collect the photo from the printer tray. Checking it was dry enough, he slipped it into his jacket pocket to avoid it getting crumpled in his bag.

Mia was tying across her silk gown when he turned back. “Good luck with your present,” she said as he walked back out again.

“Huh?”

“Your courtesy photo,” Mia said, following him around to explain, “hope the cute guy, who picks you up on his bike sometimes, likes your stuff.” She regarded him, knowingly.

Bucky stopped only to flash her a smile and didn’t reply. Trust Mia to see right through what he was doing. She’d been his first friend here for a reason.

Bucky dashed out towards reception, because he really didn’t need to get caught by Claudia with his shoes on in the back rooms. He made a plan in his head to explain it all to Mia later, so she wouldn’t tell others.

But she wasn’t much of a relationship gossiper and that was what he liked about her. Being gay led to them both having interests based outside of other people.

It was starting to get dark outside. But thankfully the day’s rain stopped an hour ago. The streetlight glow mixed in with the lingering rain droplets on everyone’s cars made them shine, almost like jewels.

Bucky did a quick check he had everything and approached the reception computer to punch in his key code. He got outside in the time to watch Steve, lit by streetlights, come riding up the road, then turn off into the sparkling carpark.

Bucky waited for him come to a stop, kill the engine, and manoeuvre down the kickstand before rushing up, dropping his bag to the ground, and taking Steve’s face in his hands.

Steve barely glanced up as Bucky pressed their lips together.

He heard a small surprised hum and felt a hand come up to touch his back.

There, undoubtedly, would be someone watching them from the reception doors, but Bucky didn’t really want to bother about all that with his Steve’s lips against his own.

Steve deepened the kiss a second longer, barely lost an inch of balance, before he pulled back with a pleased smile. “Hello to you, too,” he said, gradually opening his eyes.

Bucky had to kissed him again.

Steve smelled of a fresh shower and must have dried on the over. The streetlight, directly above, illuminated soft shadows across his face from his brow, his nose, and the cascade of his super long lashes, and reflected off his now-wet, flush lips. Stroking his thumbs down along the sides of Steve’s jaw, Bucky couldn’t help noting how handsome he was.

It reminded him, he probably would have still wanted this boy long before the serum.

“How was your shift?”

“Oh, you know, the usual.” Bucky’s eyes went up and to the side. “Clients come and they go…” He waited for the second meaning to register.

Steve’s brow furrowed slightly. “How long since you thought that one up, huh?” he said.

Grinning, Bucky jumped back for his bag, not too damp from the soaked ground, and proceeded to stuff it into the seat compartment. “Would you hate me if I say you’re not the first I’ve used that on?”

Steve’s face softened. “Of course not.” He turned his head to the side while Bucky swung a leg over the bike and settled behind him. “Also contrary to media perception, I have a very dirty sense of humour.”

“I think you have a lot dirtier everything,” Bucky said.

Steve chuckled, dipping his head.

Bucky loved that with his arms wrapped around Steve’s waist, he could feel that laughter through his back. He found it was half the reason he laughed himself.

With both of them ready, Steve didn’t immediately start up the engine, however. “Buck, you, uh, sure you want to come to mine tonight?”

Memory now sparked, Bucky knew there was another reason he was excited to see Steve today, besides giving him the photo. “Course, why wouldn’t I be?” he said.

It wouldn’t be too late in the day to change their plans, his shift finished at gone 4pm. But Bucky wanted this, had been looking forward to it.

Steve shrugged. “My place isn’t much. I’m fine if you would rather…” he trailed off from that thought, perhaps reconsidering. Perhaps remembering that he offered to pay for Alpine’s babysitter, when Bucky had shown him the price of the local kennel. “I suppose, I still have a TV,” he said, “so we could just watch something on Netflix. Sam gave me his password.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” When Steve tensed in his arms, Bucky realised he’d expected him to laugh instead.

Abruptly, it hit him that Steve was a bit more apprehensive of taking him home than first assumed. This was something more than a simple bout of nerves.

“What is it?”

“I just—it’s that—I don’t want you to think I’m boring,” Steve said, summing it up. “There’s not much I do off-duty, other than read and watch things… And sketch the same skyline over and over again…”

Bucky shifted upwards in the seat, but didn’t let his arms drop. “Ah, yes and back in the ’40s there were much more interesting things to do all the time?”

Steve snorted. “Fair point.”

“Do Sam and Natasha go out and do extravagant things in their spare time or something?”

“No, no,” Steve said and he touched Bucky’s hands, remaining interlaced down at his stomach, “it’s not that.” He had outlined it pretty clearly: he didn’t want Bucky to visit his flat and be left wanting.

Bucky shifted closer, put his head on Steve’s shoulder to speak right near his ear. “I’m not asking for much, Stevie, just wanted you. We’ll work out the rest. And you’re _not_ boring, I promise.”

Steve’s hand on his squeezed his interlocked fingers. He started up the engine, and got out of the carpark and half way down the road, when he asked, “ _Stevie_?”

Bucky knew what he meant. “Yeah, cause you’re easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy, Stevie,” he said. He didn’t need to see to know Steve would be rolling his eyes.

As they approached a large city-edge junction, Bucky was surprised when Steve took them further into the city, rather than towards somewhere quieter, with less people to wonder why Captain America lived around them, like up the hill or deep into the suburbs. Or even in a gated community behind several layers of security. That thought made Bucky tense after they stopped at a red light but no one around them even seemed to bat an eyelid.

Turned out Steve lived in a building complex similar to Bucky’s own. A smaller one, to be fair, with only five floors – of which, Steve resided on the third – with a shared laundry room in the basement. Although, Steve had his own machine in his apartment for privacy.

They parked at the back and Steve led him upstairs by the hand.

Steve wasn’t exaggerating about the books and the reading. A whole wall of shelving had been built across the intersection, from the kitchen through to the living room, lined head to toe with books of varying sizes.

Steve lingered beside him as Bucky took off his shoes and dropped his bag by the sofa. “Well, this is me,” he said.

“It’s nice.” In the following silence, Bucky asked, “uh, where’s the loo?”

“Oh, last door down there,” Steve pointed past the shelving wall.

“Thanks,” Bucky said and disappeared off in that direction. He didn’t really need to use anything, but needed a moment alone.

For some reason, giving Steve his courtesy photo really had him getting jittery and nervous. Maybe because none of his previous boyfriends had ever asked to see it. He got the photo out, once the door closed fully behind him, and checked the travel over hadn’t smudged any of the ink.

Other than a bit of crumpling at the edges, he was in the all clear.

Bucky slashed water over his face and washed his hands.

Remerging, he found Steve in the kitchen pulling two glasses down from the cupboard in the kitchen. He must have heard Bucky pass by with his super-sonic hearing, since as Bucky went to drop his jacket over the back of the sofa, he got asked, “do you want something to drink, Buck?”

Bucky didn’t answer. Now was the moment. He walked straight up to Steve, and held out the photo.

Steve turned just as Bucky had extended out his arm. He looked about to ask the same question again, when his gaze darted downward and his eyes immediately widened. Slowly, he took hold of what was being held out to him.

In the photo, Bucky stood in only a pair of white briefs. He had his hip jutted to side just so, left hand disappearing behind him at his waist and the other, up by his stomach, held a slither of black ribbon. A key hung on a long chain around his neck. They had taken it with one of those special cameras, therefore the only thing in focus was Bucky. The room he was in had been lit with dim but colourful lights that splashed blues and purples across his face, chest, and thighs. He’d kept a cocky smirk on his lips and, above that, a mess of youthful brunette curls sprung free at the top of his head.

“Wow, Buck, _fuck_ … just look at you.”

Bucky watched Steve, for the next few seconds, struggle to draw his eyes away from the photo in his hand and it caused an itchy blush to rise on his cheeks.

He’d expected this but it was nothing compared to seeing it. Steve really _liked_ it.

“Yeah, I know,” Bucky said, reaching a hand up to rub at the itch, creeping along the back of his neck. “Yeah, I was a newbie at the time when they took it, so obviously they took it down from the website, after I started to age up a bit as to, in their words, _not be lying to our customers_. Oh god, I almost forgot, they made me shave my chest. You can see the little bit I missed under my nipple. And I’m still not over the key—see, the ribbon makes sense because restraints or blindfolds—but the key, they said, was meant to be as if I held _the key to my heart_ or a chastity belt around my neck and our clients would be encouraged to come _retrieve_ it. It was a fucking cheap, plastic faux one, I remember now...” he laughed at that.

But when Steve didn’t return the laugh and responded with nothing, eyes remaining on the photo, a fluttery feeling jumped around in Bucky’s stomach. He’d predicted that Steve would probably have liked it, given his previous track record, just not as much as this.

It was like he couldn’t look away. He was mesmerised.

“Buck?” Steve said softly, eyes still down a second longer. Finally, he glanced up and met Bucky’s gaze. His pupils were blown wide enough that Bucky could barely see the iris, “would you mind if I kept it?”

“Steve…” Bucky stepped into his warmth then, “I mean you’ve seen me _naked_ before and you can, by the way, whenever you want. I don’t think I need clothes to cook you dinner.”

A hand snaked around his waist and pulled him flush against Steve’s chest in a possessive hold, not planning to let him get away.

Being naked around others wasn’t something that had Bucky feeling self-conscious anymore. With Steve especially, he’d done it before in his own flat. But Steve hadn’t exactly been able to see back then. The memory of that last time still ran sour through him.

It was high time to rectify that. He did get a certain thrill at the thought of walking in the nude around Steve’s home, while Steve remained fully clothed.

He was definitely thinking about that a reality when Steve turned serious once more.

“Seriously, though, um, if you’re not comfortable with me having it,” Steve said, “that’s completely fine—”

“Trust me,” Bucky cut him off, “you’re probably one of the only people I’m comfortable with having it.” He grabbed the wrist holding the photo and moved it towards Steve’s chest. “Yeah, of course, it’s yours.” Turning in Steve’s grip, this time they looked at the photo together. “I’m honestly surprised they haven’t asked me for a reshoot. I’ve been our equivalent employee of the month enough there already. But maybe they just don’t wanna bother with a shoot and calling in a photographer, unless you’re new. You have to have one for your company profile.”

Steve played with the waistband of Bucky’s jeans, hooking three fingers inside a belt loop. “Maybe instead of dinner,” he said, tugging firmly, “if you want — only if you want — I could draw you in some poses like this?”

The fluttery feeling in Bucky’s stomach bailed out as shivers down his spine. “Yeah, I’m all yours,” he said.

They left the photo in the kitchen. It would have been too much of a distraction.

In the bedroom, Steve began pulling out a few sketch books from his wardrobe and dumping them on the bed.

Bucky picked up the closest one and, with no protest from Steve, opened it up.

Steve had doodled on occasion, while they’d been hanging out together, so his talent came as no surprise. But when he took the time to properly sit down for a work, it was truly something else.

The people on the page looked nearly real, as if they could come to life at the touch of a breeze.

There were some of Natasha and Sam. Many of them laughing and sitting around, others in their full combat attire. Bucky liked this one of Natasha upside in the air, caught in a mid-cartwheel. And another of Sam, seen from below, flying with his mechanical wings spread wide open.

There was also drawings of the blue boy and red girl from the restaurant. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, Bucky remembered their names, along with a man that had strange markings on his face and clothes that looked like they were plastered onto his body. He also wore a cape that Steve had sketched in such a way which made it appear shiny. Bucky didn’t recognise him.

He recognised Clint and Sharon, however. Among more smiles and mid-laughs, one sketch had Clint pulling back on his bow string, arm muscles tight and eyes strained with concentration. In another, Sharon stood perched on an unseen surface in a light combat suit, similar to the Black Widow’s dark one.

Turning a page, Bucky tensed suddenly at the face of Tony Stark staring up at him miserably. But there was just one small sketch of Tony with his face out. The rest had him in his suit, arm raised, aimed to fire and Bucky found that a lot more palatable.

The group drawings were what really took his breath away. The amount of detail Steve had put into the faces and the clothes and the hands was incredible.

A few pages later, it didn’t take long for Bucky to start finding the drawings of himself. It really shouldn’t have come as such a surprise.

Of course, Steve would draw him.

Some were of him laughing and smiling as well and, in all honesty, it felt like he was looking in a mirror or at a photography. Steve had captured his eyes, his teeth, and his smile, the freckles that even dotted his undereye, all perfectly.

One other had him sleeping in a bed, eyes shut and mouth almost open. From the angle and the shading, it could have possibly been done in the moment, while he slept right next to Steve. But then Steve would have shown him the sketch book, if he’d brought it along for a visit.

The next few pages were filled with _parts_ of Bucky, sketches of his mouth or eyes over and over again. One appeared to be of his shoulders and, underneath that, something that looked like a bent limb. It would be either a knee or elbow, Bucky struggled to work out which one. It was so close up.

The detail in these drawings, it was so realistic, it started to have a weird effect on him, almost as if he could feel Steve on his skin.

A shiver ran down Bucky’s spine.

He thought of Steve’s eyes watching him, committing to memory the details he enjoyed so much about him so he could put them to paper later. Steve’s hands on his body like a sculptor working clay. He could almost feel it now, a brush against his lips, his face, the inside of his thigh.

When compared to how Steve drew the others, it was impossible not to notice that Bucky’s drawings stood out. None of the others had their own parts drawn separately, in fact most didn’t even take up a whole page, like his did. He turned to the next one.

Bucky’s mouth went dry.

This drawing was full length and was the first to take up two whole pages. It was of him faceup lying on a bed, judging by the pillow under his head. He was naked from what Bucky could presume, since it had been drawn from between his legs, but not far down enough to include his dick.

Or maybe because that particular body part would currently be elsewhere. With his head titled to the side, expression twisted in pleasure, his lips parted… he realised abruptly, by the way his hair had been slicked back, this was from their first night together, when Steve blew him.

A fresh blush tickled across Bucky’s skin. He’d exchanged nudes in the past, just given Steve a sensual picture of himself, but this was different. Steve had crafted this, and all the other drawings, with his bare hands.

Speaking of which, Bucky threw his head up to find Steve staring directly at him, possibly had been watching him this whole time.

Hunger glinted in Steve’s eyes. A smile curled on his lips. His shoulders tensed. There was a look about him like he had Bucky right where he wanted him.

Swallowing around a dry throat, Bucky tried for some words, “Steve, these are, uh… they’re incredible,” he said.

Steve firmly took the sketch book out of his hands and chucked it on the pile with the others. “I was thinking you could be like that,” he said, reeling Bucky in closer, “but in my bed this time.” Without confirmation, he started on the buckle of Bucky’s belt.

Bucky was nodding anyways, quickly over and over again. In his view, he’d already given over all the permission needed.

Steve got his jean’s fly open before switching direction and slipping his hands under Bucky’s shirt to haul it up over his head.

“I’m going to pose you myself, don’t worry it’ll be something easy, and then sketch your body. Sound good?” Steve said. Dropping down to his knees suddenly, he stripped Bucky of his jeans, underwear, and socks.

Bucky honestly surprised himself by not being rock hard right now. But the abrupt exposure to the chill in Steve’s apartment, across planes of bare skin and his sensitive cock, calmed him down immensely. Even with Steve’s face directly near his crotch.

He jumped up next and began to manoeuvre Bucky towards the bed, who went willingly.

Steve’s hands on his body felt amazing. Not that Bucky didn’t always enjoy the rough brush of those calloused fingertips against his skin. This time felt different with Steve manhandling him onto the bed and into a pose.

Bucky processed now what Steve said earlier and wondered, did Steve plan to blow him as well and sketch at the same time, leave him dangling on the precipice of a peak while Steve pulled away to capture what that looked.

He didn’t ask because he would do whichever and was worried speaking right now might ruin things anyways. Steve positioned his arms up and behind his head.

Sinking into the pillow, Bucky realised this would be more for his benefit, to help him lie comfortably for the long period of time.

Not breaking contact, Steve slid his hands down and across to Bucky’s face to tilt up his chin. His thumb brushed up against Bucky’s bottom lip, pulling it down away from the top.

Bucky wanted Steve to kiss him then, tried to convey that with pleading eyes.

Instead, Steve travelled further down and his hands became fire on Bucky’s skin as he rearranged his legs, one slightly over the other to turn his lower half onto its hip. He touched his cock, only briefly, to tuck it out the way into the crease of Bucky’s thighs.

Then Steve pulled off completely and took a step backwards.

A tingling sensation spread, like marbles dispersed across a tiled floor, all along his body from the loss of contact as Bucky watched Steve watch him.

“Perfect,” he said, “see how long you can hold that, Buck, and then we’ll find another pose.”

Bucky would have nodded, but Steve positioned his head. He would have spoken, but Steve positioned his lips as well.

Steve took his silence as enough, however, and brought his sketchbook into his lap. He flipped to the last page Bucky had been on, raising a brow at the drawing as if surprisingly impressed by his own work, before turning onto the next page. One that was empty.

While Bucky was distracted by those sketches, Steve had mostly set up everything he needed. He sat on a stool, he’d gotten out of somewhere, barely a foot away from the bed and retrieved a pencil from a case on the dresser next to him.

If Bucky thought Steve’s hands on his body, if finding all the naughty secret drawings Steve made of him had a weird effect on him. That was nothing compared to Steve’s gaze whilst he sat nearby sketching Bucky in real time.

The tingling sensation, that never really went away, buzzed under Bucky’s skin. He followed Steve’s gaze down his body as he flicked broad strokes across the page to presumably get a general sketch of him. From this side of the sketchbook, he had no idea what he was focusing on. He could only work that out from Steve’s gaze as it drifted over his bare skin and, after a while, it felt like Steve’s hands on him again.

No one had ever made Bucky experience something like this before.

He dated a photography a while back, who had asked for Bucky to model for them. But photographs were a quick snap and it’s done.

This method, of sketching his naked body sprawled out on the bed, took much longer. It took work and care to get it right, to make him look good. The concentration in Steve’s expression, how he seemed to disappear into his own sense of primal focus. And the fact that focus was solely on him made Bucky hot. Because Steve was doing all of it because of him.

The red blush returned to Bucky’s face and, like Steve’s hands and his gaze, travelled down his body.

It didn’t take long for Steve to notice it. A smirk appeared on his lips. Before Bucky knew it, he was sitting forward and brushing off the page. He’d finished his sketch quicker than expected.

“I’m done,” he said, eyes glued to the paper in his lap. He gestured with his pencil, “if you wanted to find another pose.”

Bucky’s limbs felt heavy like sunken rocks and while Steve distracted himself with setting up a fresh page, Bucky shifted around to lie on his other side. He bought his arms down and laid them across his stomach to allow them the time to wake up. From this new angle, he would be exposing his ass to Steve and as if to really nail that fact home, a cold draft swept all the down his backside.

They cycled through different poses a few more times.

Bucky seemed positive, by the end of it, his body would be covered in exaggerated patches of flushed flesh. His blush kept rising and rising. Each time he changed position, it adapted, while Steve’s eyes roamed over every inch of his skin and sketched it out on the paper below. He was exposed, laid out for deliberate inspection by the one man he’d happily do this for over and over again.

Nearing the end of the fifth sketch, Bucky wanted nothing more than for Steve to physically start touching him. His skin practically ached for it.

Steve retracted his pencil then, almost reading Bucky’s mind. He started to flex his back and shoulders, shifting around on his stool to get a few clicks out of his bones.

The second his sketch book touched the floor, Bucky took it as the signal to sit up and throw his legs off the side of the bed. Surprisingly, his dick sat there barely half-hard. He thought to give it a few strokes to relieve the pressure, but maybe Steve might plan to stop and do something else. Although, he highly doubted that.

“Buck?”

Bucky glanced up.

“What would you say to me pinning you up against the wall later tonight and fucking you ’til you can’t remember your name?” Steve said. He said it as casually as if he were asking what they wanted for dinner.

Both of them couldn’t deny, though, he’d never asked anything like this before. Even after their conversation clearing things up, Steve still never initiated much in terms of sex. He never said no when Bucky asked, but he hadn’t pushed for it first yet himself. This wasn’t hard to miss.

Bucky blinked, staring for a solid second, before he said, “…why wait until then?”

Steve feigned a consideration of this, something in his eyes telling Bucky it wouldn’t be a hard decision to make. He must have felt the tension in the air, would practically see its effects all over Bucky’s body.

Steve stood up.

But instead of making his way over to Bucky, he headed straight towards the desk of drawers in the corner.

Bucky wanted to scream at having to watch him search around inside, instead of feeling his hands on him already.

Steve got a firm grasp on what he’d been looking for and finally strode over to Bucky. He crouched in front of him, planting the bottle of lube and condom packet on the dresser.

Steve cupped his face with both hands and it felt like fireworks under Bucky’s skin.

His eyes stung suddenly and he was surprised he didn’t well up with tears from the onslaught of different emotions. He put a hand over Steve’s to keep it there.

“You okay?” Steve asked, still always thinking of him first, “you don’t want a minute to recover from having stayed in the same position for ages?”

“I feel fine,” Bucky said, truthfully. “Getting rid of pins of needles gave me something to do.”

Steve frowned at that. “Oh yeah, sorry, I got a little carried away towards the end there.”

Bucky squeezed the hand on his face before it got taken away. “I had fun,” he said, also truthful.

Relaxing, Steve leant up on his knees and drew Bucky in for a kiss. He peppered a few around Bucky’s face and began a wet trail down his neck. “I think you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever sketched,” he kissed into the delicate skin there.

“ _Thing_ …?” Bucky teased.

Steve snapped himself up right, quickly explaining, “well, uh, I—um… I’ve drawn both living and inanimate things so it’s only meant to be a word that covers all bases—”

“I’m joking,” Bucky said, trailing his own path down Steve’s neck. He laughed from where he had his face buried in the collar of Steve’s shirt and felt him begin to relax again. After a second, he started tugging up the hem of Steve’s shirt, needed to get his hands on his bare skin.

Steve finished the job for him, flung the shirt somewhere behind him and Bucky ran his hands down to the gathering on hair between his pecks.

Steve then snatched up the lube bottle and ushered Bucky to move his legs apart. Crouched between open thighs, he made sure to warm his fingers up slightly before they slipped inside.

Bucky sunk back onto Steve’s bed in an attempt to will his body to relax at the intrusion. It was a lot harder than his own bed, but not too far that it became uncomfortable.

Arms above his head, he stretched out, tilted his head to the side, got lost in the sensation of Steve’s fingers moving nicely inside of him. “You gonna sketch me like this later on?” he said in jest.

Steve ducked his head and bit his lip.

Bucky dropped the act, sat up suddenly on his elbows. “You were _genuinely_ thinking that, weren’t you?”

Steve shrugged his shoulders around to shake off the embarrassment at getting caught. “The serum gave me the ability to remember really good,” he said, keeping his attention down on his unrelenting fingers, “so I only have to close my eyes and… there you are.”

Bucky raised a foot to thump him on the side, because he was here right now, and when Steve opened his eyes again, they were on Bucky’s own.

“It’s what I meant by how you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever drawn,” Steve said, voice already raspy. “I find your body, your face …you, really challenging to draw. Yours are the only pieces I can’t quite seem to _get right_. It never looks enough like you that I’m satisfied.”

Bucky found this a very hard scenario to fully process what Steve was saying as the arousal began to coil in his gut. His hips twitched of their own accord.

Steve pulled his fingers out momentarily, dribbled the bottle on the tips, then slipped them back inside to relieve Bucky’s sharp protests. He finished opening him up mere minutes later and stood to dispose of the rest of his clothes.

Bucky bent upwards to meet him halfway as Steve crouched again and yanked his hips down along the bed, towards his lap. A quick grab of the lube bottle to slick up his dick, Steve tore open the condom and rolled it on.

Bucky took Steve’s face in his hands, thighs tight around his waist. “Keep your eyes open for this one,” he said before Steve gradually eased into him.

He started slow, for both their sakes, waited for Bucky to get adjusted, and added more lube if necessary. He kissed up Bucky’s neck or any expanse of skin he could reach. Resting Bucky on his thighs and the bed allowed Steve to bury his hands in Bucky’s hair, finding that sweet spot on the back of his neck while he moved inside him.

They reached Bucky’s first one out here, without a single brush against his dick. Bucky realised what Steve was planning and didn’t stop him just to see if he’d do it.

In between catching his breath, Bucky outlined the shape of Steve’s lips. Steve smiled and they leant forward together for a kiss.

Steve then didn’t waste a second of recovery hoisting Bucky up, still locked together and sticky, relocating them over to the as-promised sex against the wall. As his bare skin collided with the cool wall surface, he knew Steve was strong, yet he still managed to rewrite that knowledge every time.

Sandwiched between a solid surface and Steve’s firm body, suspended in the air made Bucky feel like he was floating as the pleasure slammed into him without pause. His second orgasm came as a surprise by arriving much quicker than expected, tipping him from a higher peak than the previous, vision blurring, crying out while he clung to Steve’s shoulders for dear life.

But where he expected Steve to either end it there or even break for a small second. With a smirk on face, he kept moving. Swallowing up the whines escaping Bucky’s mouth, his hips kept snapping forward.

After floating down from his second high, other hand wrapped around his dick, Bucky pushed weakly at Steve’s chest. “Steve, could we... take a break?”

Finally, those hips pummelling into him halted. “Four ‘s your limit?” Steve said, overtly smug.

“One is usually my limit!” Bucky didn’t know fully whether he wanted to slap him or to kiss him. He went with a mix of both because Steve could take either, pushing him at the shoulder and reeling him in to rest their foreheads together, Steve’s arms still the main thing holding him upright. His breath quickly turned into a giggle at Steve’s well-deserved smug face. This time it was laughter that bubbled up inside of Bucky, begging for release.

Steve laughed too and gently shifted him around to allow Bucky to drop one of his legs. He was still buried snugly inside of him.

He could have kept going, Steve made it very clear that he could by starting right back up again at the fourth mark, after Bucky’s hand stilled around his own dick. But the ache in his back, from being bent this way, had gotten a little bit too noticeable to ignore. And he was hungry. He imagined Steve might be as well.

Bucky, breathless, slumped back against the wall, partly held up by Steve’s strength. “You’re better than a goddamn machine, Rogers,” he said, “just... wow.”

“I just do the stuff you seemed to like,” Steve said, a soft smile in his voice. “Whaddya mean _better_ than a machine?”

“Well, dildos can’t kiss me.”

Or hold him suspended in the air while he felt nothing but pleasure. Or make him feel a strange level of body confidence he didn’t know he even had in him.

Something tickled at his cheek and Bucky glanced down to find Steve’s eyes on him, his hand to Bucky’s face.

He brushed his fingers and thumb down idly towards Bucky’s lips, mirroring the gesture Bucky did to him earlier while they were sat at the bed. “Maybe we can test your limit another time, see how far you can really go?” Steve said.

Leaving Bucky with that, he carefully lifted Bucky enough to slide out with the least amount of burn.

Things were a bit sore and spent as to be expected. The red ring of his hole and the tip of his dick namely the most tender. Steve caressed up Bucky’s arms and around his hips, rubbing in small circles here and there.

It helped to bring Bucky back into a normal state. A state which made it all the more shocking when he glanced down. “Jesus... And you didn’t come at all through that?”

Steve shook his head, somehow amused by the red peak of his cock, standing erect between them. “‘fraid not.”

“Fucking hell…” Bucky swore, “no wonder it’s driving you mad.”

Steve merely shrugged.

“I could blow you?”

Another shrug. “Might not do anything.”

But he let Bucky twirl them around, push him back against the wall and sink to his knees. “Worth a try, and you can always tell me to stop,” Bucky said, rolling off the condom. To save Steve’s carpet, he left it tied in a knot on his lap.

Steve brushed his hand through Bucky’s hair as a yes, kept him eyes on him as Bucky’s lips opened and he leant forward.

Steve came so fast it startled both of them and Bucky nearly choked on the salty taste suddenly spurting down his throat. He cleaned him up with his mouth, leaving no mess this time, and fell back on his knees.

Steve almost looked more spent from one, than he had after four.

Bucky wiped across his mouth with the back of his hand, very self-satisfied.

His energy not spent, however, Steve had no intention of leaving Bucky on the floor for long. He hauled him up into his arms, semen on his carpet be damned, one hand sliding down to cup at Bucky’s ass. “You are honestly a miracle worker, Mr Barnes,” he said, choosing to keep the hand there and Bucky’s body flush against his.

“Anything to get you like this,” Bucky said, reciprocating the hold.

“Like what?”

“Well, like I’ve said, you are very affectionate post coital.”

Steve’s face lit up. He tightened his hold around Bucky. “I’ll show you affectionate,” he said, ushering them towards the bathroom for a much-needed clean up.

To be fair, Bucky got about halfway there before he was hoisted up off his feet again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The wonderful piece of art, featured in this chapter, is a commissioned piece I got from Inflomora right back at the start of writing this fic.... (which was at the same time for the other art piece I got, that's later to come)
> 
> You can find them on Twitter under [**@inflomora_art**](https://twitter.com/inflomora_art) <3 <3
> 
> The reference I gave them was a real photoshoot that Chris Evans did for Flaunt magazine so just google that for another treat, after Inflomora's amazing fanart.
> 
> For visual peeps like me, Bucky’s first pose is something akin to [this](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5e/b1/94/5eb194580c56be4d4042d8198463cfba.jpg), just minus the boobs and with the left leg a little further down. BE WARNED, though, it is literally a picture of someone naked.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Always write for yourself, babes

Steve elbowed Bucky’s side to prevent him from fully slipping under, to go from a partial nap into full blown sleep.

Bucky jerked up with a grunt, running a swift hand over his face.

“If you’re tired, we should go to bed,” Steve said. “Come on, before I have to sling you over my shoulder.”

“I’m awake,” Bucky said, voice raspy from his short-lived nap.

Steve reached for the remote and exited Netflix before switching the TV off completely.

Bucky took the time to stretch out his arms, click a few of his bones, and stand up.

Well, attempted. Once on his feet, he started to stumble slightly.

Steve rushed up to grab him, quickly and without thinking. He panicked at having to watch Bucky’s focus dance around in front of him until he realised what was wrong. “Head rush?”

Bucky smiled sleepily while he adjusted. Eventually, he gave a small nod.

“You think you can brush your teeth without my help?” Steve teased, although his genuine assistance was ready to jump on in, if called for.

“Your concern is appreciated,” Bucky said, “but I’ve got this, Captain.” He flicked his fingers from off his head in a mock salute and disappeared in the direction of the bathroom.

Watching Bucky waddle dizzily out of the room made Steve really want to sweep him off his feet again. But he was at the point where he worried it was becoming too much. He didn’t want Bucky to think he was patronising him.

He just really enjoyed having him in his arms. Something about the close press of his body, Bucky’s arms around his shoulders, did it for him.

Steve took to clearing up their takeout boxes, instead, and packing away what he could into fridge, tidying up enough that wouldn’t be too much of a chore in the morning. He heard the bathroom door open, then the light to his bedroom flick on, and couldn’t stop the smile on his face.

Steve didn’t know how to explain it yet. Bucky had really made him feel like himself today. Not the _Star Spangled Man with a Plan_.

But, simply, Steve Rogers. And he’d enjoyed who he found, rather.

Steve had not felt like that since right back when he first met Sam Wilson.

Natasha was a great friend. But she only knew New York from a spy’s perspective and struggled to shake that whenever they went out to drink or explore the city. She maintained a habit of keeping herself on high alert and anything that stood out as suspicious or strange, she had to draw attention to it, which Steve loved dearly about her. It would still be a Nat and Steve day, but usually down to the fact they were _always_ Nat and Steve.

If he wanted a day out to do something completely devoid of anything work related, like a trip out into the wildness hiking, watching some sports game, or even a visit to a theme park, he would call up Sam.

Now, he had another option.

Again, for a few hours today, Steve was allowed to explore something intrinsically interlocked with his very soul. He could draw in his sleep, had been doing it since he was a child, back when his mother was still alive to literal days after he emerged from the ice and needed to find his first set of housing.

He could see it in his head, even now, the way Bucky reacted to his artist’s gaze, the blush that never ended, reaching to all over his body.

Steve admittedly worried his sketches might have come off on the wrong end, as he hadn’t told Bucky about them until they were physically in front of Bucky in his hands. And one of them involved him in a particularly raunchy position. Even then he didn’t exactly explain it, per say, only watched as Bucky’s eyes jumped from page to page and an interesting array of emotions had played out on his face.

Then Bucky had found the one private drawing of him and he _liked_ it, wanted to pose for Steve some more, and that led them onto other things…

Bucky had given him his courtesy photo and in exchange for that, Steve had gotten to draw him several times over. It seemed like an equivalent exchange.

Grabbing a cup of juice for Bucky, Steve closed the fridge and headed for his bedroom. As he approached the door, an odd patch of something broad and pink, shifting about, caught his attention.

He’d taken Bucky’s courtesy photo from the kitchen hours ago. Before ordering takeout, he’d nabbed it off the countertop and stuck it to the side of his bedroom mirror.

So now when he entered his bedroom, Steve found Bucky kneeling on the bed in nothing bar a pair of boxers, watching himself in the mirror and trying to imitate the pose in the photo.

Bucky didn’t spot him at first, the angle from the mirror didn’t match up enough, so Steve got to watch him for a few moments longer, leaning against the door frame, whilst Bucky shifted his hip and tried out different seductive expressions.

He found the whole sight adorably charming, yet endearingly vulnerable, in a way only Bucky could solicit from him.

After a few more seconds, Steve took a step inside the room and Bucky’s gaze finally met his in the mirror.

Bucky reacted in an instant, eyes blown wide and, before he could dip his head, another fresh blush coloured his cheeks. Even with all they’d done today, Bucky somehow felt embarrassed at being caught.

Steve walked around the bed, put the glass down on the table next to Bucky and shot him a smile when he finally managed to look up.

The silence got squeezed out of them and they shared a laugh.

“Hey, that photoshoot was a long time ago,” Bucky said, explaining, “wanted to see if I still had it in me.” He hadn’t lost it yet in Steve’s opinion.

Steve looked from the photo and back to the Bucky on his bed.

The blush was still there, spreading down to Bucky’s chest now.

“I’d have loved to draw you like that,” Steve said, “but I doubt it would be comfortable keeping the pose long enough for me.”

Bucky shrugged like he wouldn’t mind. Like he wouldn’t mind holding whatever pose Steve asked for, for however long he needed.

Steve didn’t know quite what to say to that yet.

So he went with nothing and followed Bucky’s change of direction to the sketch book, abandoned by the sitting stool in the corner. Only realising now, he was yet to show Bucky the final results.

“Oh yeah, can I see your drawings now?” Bucky said, reaching out a hand.

They’d become so distracted by showering and food and a movie, Steve had nearly forgotten about his sketches until now. He retrieved the sketchbook and slumped down onto the end of the bed, so Bucky could come up behind him and peer over his shoulder. He opened it up and the first page it landed on was that double page spread of Bucky on their first night together.

The grip Bucky held on his shoulders tightened. He decided then he might recreate that image in a minute after they got into bed.

Steve turned the page to show Bucky his work from today and a small gasp was audible right from behind. He couldn’t really stay too modest, however, he’d given it his all.

“They’re really, fucking… Jesus Christ, I… they’re amazing, Steve,” Bucky struggled to get out, a little breathless.

On the page, he lay spread out on top a floating cloud of bed sheets, staring directly at them. The next page, his face no longer visible, he laid the other way, exposing the swell of his ass that Steve had spent a good few tries starting over to get right.

Bucky curled his arms further around Steve’s shoulders and spoke against his ear, “so did you get me right this time?”

“What?”

That honestly had Steve at double take because it felt like Bucky read his mind.

“You said before that you— that you struggled to draw me compared to everyone else. Do I look enough… you know, like me? Do I look right? Did having me here right in front of you help in any way?”

Being honest, Steve wouldn’t be able to tell for the next couple of days. He’d been staring at these drawings for over an hour today and that amount of examination always clouded his judgement. They didn’t appear any different compared to everything else he’d ever drawn. He needed a day or two or five for it to blur around the edges, then he would know for certain.

But right now, pinching the pages together, he flicked back and forth to his explicit drawing of Bucky and the ones he drew today. All for show, of course, but it got him the response he wanted. He heard the breath catch in Bucky’s throat once more.

“Yeah, Buck, I think it helped a lot,” he said, slow and low tone of voice.

Bucky withdrew his arms and the second he leaned back far enough for Steve to see the dark circles forming under his eyes, he announced they were going to bed.

Bucky made no objection.

Thankfully, he was still awake when Steve returned from the bathroom, checking something on his phone.

Bucky laid in bed in a pair of his own button up pyjamas, while Steve planned to sleep how he always did, in a pair of slacks and nothing else. He kept the light on as he clambered on in to join him.

Bucky yawned and flopped dramatically back onto the mattress. He flung his arms above his head with a sigh and it caused his shirt to ride up and expose the skin of his stomach. He opened his mouth to say something.

But before he could make another sound, Steve leaned over and started to kiss at that expanse of bare skin. “Just a light snack before bed,” he said at Bucky’s confusion.

“Snack?” Bucky laughed, “Steve, where are you going—?”

Steve flicked his gaze across. “The sketch was fun, but the real thing will always be better,” he said and revelled in watching the smile fall away from Bucky’s lips.

He had already come a considerable amount today. Maybe, there was room for just one more.

Bucky brought a hand up to cup the back of Steve’s head.

Steve took that as permission to carry on. He continued his trail over to Bucky’s hip, sucking a bruise into the bend there, until he had Bucky squirming and fully hard beneath him. Then freeing him of his PJ bottoms, he took Bucky’s cock into his mouth.

Bucky cried out in pleasure.

¬

His key turned easy in the lock as Bucky opened his apartment door, only then to be greeted by the strong smell of cooked meat and vegetables. He ripped the ear buds away from his ear, while stood in the hallway.

Someone was _in_ his apartment.

He would be alarmed, if he didn’t instantly recognise that off-tune voice singing terribly along to the radio. He noted that Alpine also didn’t come running to his heel, asking to be fed or for him to come scare off their unexpected guest.

Although she got put outside when he left for work.

Softening the fall, Bucky closed the door without sound. The dull ache in his face persisted. He slung his bag off his shoulder and placed it cautiously on the ground, as so not to jostle the bottle of wine inside. He shrugged his jacket off and hung it up. He nearly grunted at brushing a hand against his cheek.

Bucky toed himself out of his shoes and exhaled deeply. He felt like utter shit, bone tired, and wanted nothing more than to collapse in bed with an ice bag plastered to his sore cheek and that bottle of red.

But he was very glad someone else was here.

Walking slowly, he made his way into the kitchen… to discover Steve, wearing the apron that usually spent its days hung up on the wall, stirring a sizzling contents around in one of Bucky’s frying pans.

The table had been laid, with two plates, cutlery, and the flowers his sister left behind a month or so ago.

“Steve ..?”

The word left Bucky’s mouth before he could stop it.

But Steve was already twirling around, his super-hearing dobbing Bucky in, “oh shit! You’re back earlier than I thought.”

With the better view, Bucky could take in the fact that Steve was wearing just a vest and slacks in bare feet. He stepped aside to reveal the cooker had been turned to the right setting, despite the icons worn away long ago from cleaning.

Alpine even lay curled up on the nearby counter - not the one with food prep on it, though - possibly fast asleep.

“What’s this?”

“Sorta ruins the surprise a little...” Steve said, sheepish. He realigned himself quickly, rolling his shoulders. “But, doesn’t matter, I can hit the ground running. Okay,” he cleared his throat, “so I made dinner, it’s some chicken curry, which I tried very hard to cook, so please be gentle.”

Bucky immediately spotted the sauce began to bubble in the pan.

“And oh, I got some bath salts—or bath bombs, that’s probably the better phrasing, right? So we can bathe each other in your tiny ass bath and then we can chill with a movie. _That one_ is staying a surprise for now, we’ll get to it later.” Steve brushed his hands off the apron. “I think that’s about everything.”

When Bucky didn’t respond and merely continued to stare at him, Steve became concerned.

His brow furrowed. “You okay?”

Maybe it was the way Bucky was standing. Or the expression on his face, or the fact Steve knew him so well by now. Also given how he’d come home earlier than expected, something didn’t add up.

Steve’s keen eye zoned in on the developing bruise on Bucky’s cheek and his concern deepened. “Everything alright?”

“I had a really bad day,” Bucky stated simply. He started to walk around the table towards Steve. “This guy hit me.”

It would be impossible to miss the way Steve tensed instantly because of that. But he didn’t interrupt, let Bucky finish first.

“Well, he _tried_. He _did_ hit me but I got away before it could get worse and called in our security.”

“That’s terrible, Buck.”

“It happens sometimes,” Bucky said and he shrugged because it was true.

Another prick who thought the price tag meant he could do whatever he wanted, forgetting there was a human on the other end of his fist. Along with some unpleasant consequences for his actions.

“We have a system setup to prevent real bad stuff, and it’s a good system.”

There were hidden panic buttons all over the room, Bucky had hit the one just under the edge of the bed, probably broken it when he kicked it with his leg. The security, always in the corridors, would then be notified and an alarm go off in each room next to him. They let the customers know about the latter, but the locations of the buttons were obviously left out.

“But…” Bucky sighed, “they have to do an inquiry, ask a bunch of questions and stuff, so that meant he was kept in the lobby for a long time. I really didn’t want to see him after he, you know…”

“Tried to hurt you,” Steve finished.

“Yeah…” Bucky was close enough now to feel the ever-present warmth radiating off Steve, close enough to smell him.

He really loved the sweet smell of whatever detergent Steve used. He couldn’t explain it exactly, but it created the embodiment of softness in Bucky’s mind. Mixed in, there was always the lingering undertone of gunpowder on Steve’s skin.

“They sent me home early,” Bucky said, “and I have tomorrow off to make up for it.” He couldn’t wait any longer and slipped his arms around Steve’s waist. “So, I come back home to find my brilliant boyfriend has made a wonderful dinner for me.” Burying his face in Steve’s neck, he breathed in everything of this man and hugged tighter, “I don’t deserve you.”

Steve tensed, although he tried to hide it and, immediately, Bucky knew he shouldn't have said that out loud.

But Steve still hugged him back, without any hint of hesitation, wrapping his strong arms around Bucky’s frame. He planted a kiss in Bucky’s hair.

And then another, in case the first wasn’t enough.

“I’m really not sure what to say,” Steve started slowly, “I’m here if you wanna talk about it more or if you want a distraction. Whatever you need. We can call this whole night off and just chill with the movie. Or I can take you out—although, yeah, you probably don’t want that right this minute—that was rather stupid of me to suggest, forget I mentioned it—”

“Steve?”

“Yeah,” Steve breathed, desperate.

Bucky squeezed his eyes shut to soothe his racing heartrate. He was sure Steve would feel it through his chest, if not hear it with that sonic hearing of his, but he wanted Steve to know how he was making him feel.

Although, the thought suddenly occurred to him.

“How did you get in?” Bucky asked. It couldn’t have been the front door, he was yet to give Steve a key.

“I climbed up the fire escape and through a window,” Steve confessed. “Found Alpine outside, so I let her in with me. I think she’s starting to like me.”

If anything, she liked him more than Bucky. She would leave him out of her traps and mischief compared to his other guests.

This had been almost exactly what Bucky expected to hear. He could easily picture Steve making the nine foot leap up to fire ladder and hauling himself up on to the ironwood stairs, getting odd looks from any of Bucky’s residents with open curtains as he made his way up to Bucky’s floor.

“What did you cook?” he asked next.

“Uh, chicken curry. Katsu, I think,” Steve said, not loosening his hold around Bucky for a second, even as the saucepan began to scream for attention. “There were lots of ingredients …with names I’ve never heard of before, had to do a lot of googling.”

“It smells good.” Bucky said and then he gave a deep sigh.

The chance of burning the food became too high, they finally drew apart.

Sniffling, Bucky rubbed down his face to try and fight off the overriding emotion still tingling below the surface.

For a moment, he watched Steve stir around the cooked meat and turn down the heat, then said, “I’m gonna freshen up, you keep cooking.” Without a glance back, he headed off towards the bathroom.

“Buck?”

Bucky stopped in the doorway.

“Please don’t… think you need to deserve me.”

The sincerity and conviction in Steve’s voice, he had to believe him. He didn’t say anything, however, because he could feel it would undo all his hard work not to cry. Rather, he looked back at Steve, gave him a firm nod, and disappeared from the room.

Bucky got cleaned up, cooled his hot face with a splash of water from the bathroom sink, gave his bruised face an examination. It was plumping and purpling up nicely. He returned to the kitchen with a fresh shirt on and some more comfortable pants, and started to unpack his work back, disposing of stuff in his laundry basket.

Work kept most of the uniform - if it could be called that, since he never wore it for long - in the building. But Bucky still took his own towel and silk dressing gown, as he found the ones at work gave him unwanted rashes.

He found Steve had finished dinner, turned off the cooker and was plating up as he came back into the room.

Settling down the bottle of wine on the counter caught Steve’s attention. Although, he made no comment.

Alpine, having woken up, meowed at him from her spot on the kitchen counter. But upon spotting Bucky at the door, suddenly changed her attention onto him instead. Hopping down, she came bounding over to rub herself against his calves.

Bucky stroked down the full length of her fluffy back until she’d had enough and left to go complete her evening nap somewhere else.

Straightening up, he noticed the cookbook Steve must have been using and frowned. Surely it couldn’t be the one it appeared to be. He flipped it to the front cover and snorted lightly.

Oh, it was.

“Is this what you were cooking from?” Bucky said, looking to Steve.

He glanced up. “Yeah.”

“It’s from my Wagamama cookbook.”

“Oh,” Steve stopped in his tracks. It was visible on his face, the dots connecting together in his head. “I just looked at the bookmark on the page, thought you might have saved it cause it’s your favourite or something.”

“It is,” Bucky said, confirming.

For a solid minute, he simply regarded Steve and basked in this, honestly, unstopping flow of warmth and happiness that rushed through him.

Steve had done all of this just for him, a meal cooked just for him, picked it because he found Bucky’s bookmark, knowing it might be his favourite.

This evening, Bucky had planned to arrive home and cocoon in front of the TV in a million blankets, with this bottle of wine, and his own goddamn self-pity.

But now instead, he didn’t need to.

Steve caught him staring and turned away, spooning rice into a bowl. “You okay?”

“It’s nothing,” Bucky said and hummed on the last syllable. “It’s just… it’s… you gotta admit that _is_ sorta funny.”

Steve’s shoulders hunched in a small shrug.

Bucky flipped back to the recipe page. “I’m interested to see how well you did, though, since I’ve never actually gotten around to making it before.”

Steve placed the saucepan and pot down by the sink for washing later. Then pulling out a chair at the table, “get over here, soldier and come get your grub,” he said.

Bucky mock-saluted and took at seat opposite. “Yes, Captain.”

Steve tried as he might to hide his amused smirk and Bucky couldn’t deny he liked the effect that word had on him.

Both sat down, Steve pointed to the bottle that sat boldly on the kitchen countertop. “Did you want to break open the wine you bought?” he asked.

It would need to be removed soon anyway, before Alpine took it upon herself to do that for them by knocking it onto the floor panels below.

Bucky shook his head. “Let’s save it for the bath,” he said and got a knowing smile from Steve.

¬

Bucky gradually awoke to the gentle swaying motion of being carried. A warm, solid structure held him close with care. He struggled a second to remember what happened. They’d been watching a movie and he must have fallen asleep.

Again.

It didn’t help he’d got alcohol in his system. That always guaranteed he would him drift off, unwelcomely. And they’d stuck around in the bath until Bucky’s whole body melted into lax limps, down to the muscle and bone.

Steve didn’t seem to mind though, had only hugged Bucky closer on the sofa when he’d noticed him drifting off barely 20 minutes into the movie. He had really managed to surprise Bucky with a blu-ray copy of an old Star Trek movie. It was one of the less good ones but Bucky appreciated the thought, nonetheless. Steve wanted to watch something Bucky liked with him because it would make Bucky happy.

Then Steve surprised both of them by getting more invested in the story than Bucky. Bucky remembered he’d felt himself getting shaken awake at several points.

Abruptly, but no less gentle, he felt himself being laid down on something soft and sunken.

A bed.

Something fumbled at his stomach. He felt the button of his jeans pop open and the soft chill of his apartment air slide over his skin as Steve tried his best to smoothly pull the fabric off from around his waist and over his thighs. He got them almost down to the calves, when they got stuck, clogged up over Bucky’s socks.

Bucky remembered now, Steve had told him, after his superiors discovered during the war he was immune to most diseases, they would shove him into almost all of the medical tents they came across. Over time, he’d learnt a descent modicum of useful skills, including changing the clothes of people who were lying down. The nurses had one of the few people who didn’t let his Captain America identity stop them from ordering him around, most of the time not very nicely, and he’d appreciated that about them.

Steve cursed and tried Bucky’s jeans again. He seemed yet to suss out that his socks were the culprit. Army soldiers probably had too many holes in theirs to have made this much of a difference.

Bucky heard Steve’s voice come through low and raspy, “your damn skinny jeans do not want to let go of you right now. Please, _come on_ , I’m trying not to wake him up.”

Bucky forced his eyes open. If he didn’t try now, he would definitely fall back to sleep. His bedside lamp was the only thing lighting the room but it still managed to sting his vision.

“Steve…”

Immediately Steve came up to his face to brush his fingers against Bucky’s cheek. “Hey, no, no, go back to sleep, sweetheart. I’m just getting you ready for bed.”

“It’s okay,” Bucky said, stretching up his arms along with a few pops and clicks. “You actually woke me up a while ago.”

Steve’s face dropped. “And you didn’t think to help me with your clothes?”

Bucky couldn’t stop the laugh at Steve’s cute, little pout. “You were doing such a great job,” he said with a sleepy, cheeky grin.

Steve exhaled, struggling through a reluctant laugh. He leant over to place a sweet kiss on Bucky’s forehead, and promptly left him to it.

Forcing himself off the bed, Bucky changed into some three-day-old pyjamas, went off to do a quick Alpine check, and immediately dived back under the covers again as soon as he got back in his bedroom. He lay on his side for a long minute. Sure he had already drifted off, when he heard the toilet flush across the apartment.

Steve returned moments later and flung the covers off on his side. He climbed into bed, reaching out for Bucky and pulling him into his arms.

Bucky let out a small, sleep-coated whine as a hand snaked up to massage at his neck.

“Shhh shhh, I’m here,” Steve said, nearly right into his ear and that made his voice seem to resonate through Bucky’s entire body. “Nothing else needs to be done, please go back to sleep.”

Bucky went to listen to him. An abrupt tightness swelled in his chest. His heart rate started to pick up and he knew Steve would hear it - or _feel_ it, whatever – that he would notice the sudden change in him. Secure and safe in his arms, Bucky could smell his bathroom hand wash on his hands. Steve was all around him and the urge overcame him. He knew it was now or never. Before he fell asleep again, he had to tell Steve what he meant to him.

He simply had to.

After all Steve had done for him today, who could blame him? After all he’d done for him in the last several months. Time and time again, he had shown he could be there for Bucky, when needed, and made up tenfold when he couldn’t. Surely that was enough to signify, Steve felt the same.

Affection swirled around in Bucky’s stomach and he was sure if he were on his feet, he would feel dizzy. Maybe it was the alcohol in his system dulling his inhibition. Today, Steve had practically spoilt him rotten, on a day that was meant to be pathetic and miserable.

So he had to say it.

“Steve?”

“Yep?”

“I love you.”

Of all the reactions he expected, Steve tensed.

Bucky wanted to process that properly, allow Steve another second to give a better reaction, but he couldn’t stop the panic now rushing around inside of him. He wanted to give Steve an out. He would hate if he rushed out a lie now to make Bucky feel better when he didn’t actually mean it in the long run.

Just because he wasn’t ready, didn’t mean Steve would never love him back.

“You don’t have to say it back,” Bucky rushed out, voice croaky, “I wanted you to know.”

Silence.

Steve brushed away the stray lock stuck to Bucky’s forehead. “Go back to sleep, Buck,” he said without malice.

So why did Bucky feel like he’d made a mistake, like he’d missed something?

Perhaps he’d judged this all wrong. Had he gotten everything between them wrong?

He didn’t know. And everything he thought of as a reason, he didn’t like.

No, he knew Steve and Steve knew him. It wouldn’t be fair to dump their entire relationship on three little words, when multiple other examples and actions Steve had said and done contradicted that.

So he decided to give Steve the time, to not overthink and overreact on something that could still be a misunderstanding. He would sleep and they were going to talk about this another time.

Bucky awoke to the distant echoing of a metallic sound, chirping rhythmically like an alarm on a phone. His own had never made a sound like that before and he didn’t think Steve’s had ever done so either. He opened his eyes to find Steve sat up on the side of the bed, to see his back muscles drawn tight together. He spoke in a hushed tone, trying to be quiet despite having already woken Bucky up, and it took Bucky another second to realise he was on the phone, although, he couldn’t hear at all what the other person was saying.

“Yes, sir, sure….”

…

“Of course, sir….”

…

“I get it, yeah. I understand….”

…

“Yes. I’ll be there in within the hour….”

…

“Oh, I’m, uh, not at home right now.” Steve’s shoulders became taut. “I’ll have to travel a bit extra…”

…

“No, sir. It’s nothing….”

…

“Always, duty first.”

The reality of the situation finally dawned on Bucky.

Steve was being called away for a mission.

Bucky should be relieved, the notion nagged at him because this way it would give them both more time to collect their thoughts, to come back together and discuss this relationship like adults.

But with every aspect of Steve’s job, the anxiety coiled in his gut and, for the second coming, Bucky thought only of the dangers. What if this was last time he would see him again?

The mattress dipped. Fingers softly brushed along the curve of his cheek bone. It didn’t feel like a gesture meant to wake him up.

Especially since, a moment later, Steve shook him lightly.

Bucky groaned and opened his eyes to meet Steve’s gaze.

“Sorry to wake you, Buck,” Steve said, his voice suddenly sounded strained. “I have to go, I can’t tell you why, you know the drill. I’ll try to be back as soon as I can.”

Bucky struggled to keep his eyes open. “Be safe,” he said, because he needed to.

Steve hovered for a minute longer and then leaned down to give a firm press of a kiss. “Always,” he said and he pulled away, taking all the warmth from the bed with him.

Bucky reached out, groping only at empty air. He didn’t remember falling back to sleep, he didn’t even hear his apartment door slam shut. He wasn’t aware of how much time passed.

But the next time he awoke, Steve was definitely gone.

And he wouldn’t hear single word from him for the following two weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love how I took inspiration from a friend who uses a bottle of wine as a comforter cos that's a high level adult thing to do and then Seb literally had one in his latest Instagram video.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [Tumblr](http://yellowhalcyon.tumblr.com/).


End file.
